Ecclesiastes 1:7

For Reading and Meditation:     Ecclesiastes 1:3-7

Francis Schaeffer wrote that there are times "when a negative message is needed before anything positive can begin." That sums up the Book of Ecclesiastes. It seeks first to silence us with the utter futility of life before turning our gaze to the one and only reality - God. In the passage before us today the author...

Everything sublunary is on the move, time knows nothing of rest. The solid earth is a rolling ball, and the great sun himself a star obediently fulfilling its course around some greater luminary. Tides move the sea, winds stir the airy ocean, friction wears the rock: change and death rule everywhere. The sea is not a miser's storehouse for a wealth of waters, for as by one force the waters flow into it, by another they are lifted from it. Men are born but to die: everything is hurry, worry,...