Man is a restless being. He is anxious by nature, as though he were constantly walking three feet away from a cliff. Too frightened to look over the edge, lest it swallow him up, but knowing full well the edge is there: That some terrifying chasm is walking beside him as makes his way through life. That ‘something’ is the knowledge of his own fragile existence.
We are fragile. Everybody knows it, everybody loathes it, and few are willing to face it.
This is completely understandable. Reality is terrifying. You cannot stare it down. You cannot fight it off and you cannot defend yourself against it. Even the most satisfying moments in life are, no matter how faint, tainted with this grief.
What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23)
Solomon was a man willing to point out the painful reality of our lives. But he did not do it as an outsider looking in. He did it as a man experiencing that same reality and trying to figure out how the bloody hell we are supposed to deal with it.
So how do we deal with it? Typically either with laziness or labour. We either fold our hands in despair or we work ourselves into the ground.
Then I saw that all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbour. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. The fool folds his hands and eats his own flesh. (Ecclesiastes 4:4-5)
Some inebriate themselves. Their shield against the pain of our existence is designed to disconnect. We have discovered a hundred ways to disconnect, including a multitude of mystic religious experiences, but all such shields are weak and fade by morning.
They struck me, but I feel no pain! They beat me, but I did not know it! When can I wake up to search for another drink? (Proverbs 23:35)
Some work, and work and work, to wall themselves off from the chasm, hoping that enough supplies will keep them from the pain of loss. But all such labour crumbles (Ecclesiastes 3:19-20) – and often not before it is enjoyed by somebody else, somebody who did not labour for it (Ecclesiastes 2:20).
Both the, “all in” approach, and the “all out” approach fail us says Solomon because everything, including man himself, winds up in the dust.
All of us, and all of our endeavours, are like a vapour, a mist. This is the meaning of the Hebrew word hebel, which is used throughout the Book of Ecclesiastes and is variously ( and unfortunately) translated as “meaningless” or “vanity”.
It (Hebel) is also the name of the first person to die in history. The man we know as Abel, from Genesis chapter 4. And I half suspect that this wad the bedtime reading that lead Solomon to deal with the subject.
Our lives are not meaningless and our labour is not vanity. They are vaporous.
Everyone you love is going to die. Everything you have done is going to fail. Everything you have built is going to fall.
And none of this is a random accident. It is by design (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
And so Paul,
For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21)
And it isn’t just us, says Paul, that lives under the burden of a vapourous existence. At the sin of Adam, all creation fell.
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. (Romans 8:22)
Why all this groaning? Because, says Paul,
…not only the creation, but we ourselves …groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved… (Romans 8:23-24)
The hope of resurrection.
The resurrection is, quite literally, man’s only hope. It is our only salvation from fragility and it is our only hope for the apparent futility.
Forget evolution. Forget progress. Without the redemption of our bodies we are locked into unmitigating, incomprehensible and unending disaster and despair.
That resurrection has been guaranteed to all who believe through the resurrection of the man sent from heaven;Jesus Christ, whom God has raised from the dead.
It is that resurrection and that promise of redemption that keeps us from pacing the cage and enables Paul to say that we who plough, plough in hope (1 Corinthians 9:10).
It is the promise that we will live again that enables us to navigate the grief add loss. It is the promise that all creation will be renewed that enables us to rest, and plant and build.
Many Christians are susceptible to the gnostic idea that all that matters when you come to faith is the spirit or soul of man. They try and deal with the apparent futility and grief in this life by setting aside the body and the physical world.
But the central tenant of the gospel is the resurrection of the body to eternal life. First the body of Christ, followed by the resurrection of every “body” who puts their hope in Him.
Martin Luther summed it up well when he said that, “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”.
Why? Because when the world is fully and finally renewed it will be the wicked and the works of the wicked that are removed, not the apple trees of the righteous (Proverbs 10:30, 13:22, 1 Corinthians 3:12-14).
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