“He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap” - Ecclesiastes 11:4
“Being too proud to enjoy the enjoyable is a very ugly shortcoming, and one that calls for immediate correction.” - JI Packer
I just wrapped up my first week back in the office after a three month(!) Sabbatical. Right now I am flying with a group of Christian leaders to Wyoming to spend a week off the grid fly fishing, riding horses, shooting guns, and processing. A huge thank you and well done to Jake Lemmer for his diligent work here in my absence.
One of the best parts of sabbatical was a massive increase in time to read for pleasure. According to CS Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, this is something that the devil does all in his power to keep us from doing! Many people including myself tend to read books that we think we are ‘supposed’ to read. And as most of us learned in High School, that kind of pressure can kill pleasure. But when we read for enjoyment, we are wandering into God’s territory, the author of Pleasure. The devil loves to twist the joy and privilege of reading into the boring drudgery of hell.
The same thing happens with reading the Bible. It certainly has with me. Starting sabbatical, I had no desire to read the Bible outside of family devotions. And so I didn’t! With one exception: Ecclesiastes. It is a punk rock kind of book, packed with one-liners that don’t sound like they belong in the Bible at all. For example, this is the passage that God brought back to my attention sometime in early June:
Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments always be white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (9:7-10)
Go! Go, enjoy life. Work, wine, wife. Live life to the fullest. Because you are going to die.
This encouragement to enjoy the givens of our life is not a one-off verse in Ecclesiastes; it is a repeated refrain . At the same time, “enjoy life” is not the whole message of the book. I would suggest it is roughly half of the message. Following many others, I would argue that the actual author or compiler of Ecclesiastes is urging us to listen to this Teacher, whose primary message is “enjoy life” when it’s good because life is short and evil days will come. Then the author of the book, traditionally an old King Solomon, supplies the other half: “fear God.” Taken together, the book is a warning above all against a way of life that actually robs life of enjoyment in an obsession with figuring everything out, hence the repeated warning against being “overly wise” and consuming endless books, presumably not for enjoyment but for the knowledge that St. Paul says merely ‘puffs us up.’
So, go! Enjoy your life in the fear of God. And as we have learned in our fellowship, secrets eat away at our joy. So there is no surprise that the book should end with a reminder that God will bring every secret into the light. The wisest in this world thus learn to enjoy life before the end…but the wise in the Kingdom learn that fearing God is the path to enjoying eternal life. Keep no secrets; they’re not serving you. Choose to fear God’s immanent judgment over any consequences of walking in the light now. It really is that simple.
Bonus content! I can’t help myself, it’s been three months.
Toward the end of Ecclesiastes, I came across a new angle on this metaphor of light:
“Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun. So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.” (11:7)
Light is sweet. When life is sweet, faithfulness demands savoring it, enjoying it. I have certainly been in a ‘sweet’ season of life. According to Ecclesiastes, the most faithful response is to enjoy that season. Do the thing. Ask out the girl. Invest in your relationship with your wife. Start the fun project. Take the trip. Take the risk! Go! Overthinking is no fun and will rob you of your best years. If you’re reading this, it’s not too late.
How many are the forces that conspire to rob us of enjoyment! Perhaps we feel guilty enjoying life, thinking of all the people for whom life is anything but sweet and how we could or should be doing something more useful. Perhaps we experience what Brené Brown calls “foreboding joy,” guarding our heart in case disaster strikes. Imagining ourselves to be resisting the Forbidden Fruit, we might in fact be eyeing the fruit of the Tree of Life with suspicion. It seems too good to be true.
What a tragedy, a “grievous evil” in Ecclesiastes’ words. The Teacher is plain. What is “good and fitting” in our vaporous life is to learn enjoyment. At the end of Chapter 5 through the beginning of 6, Ecclesiastes compares two men, both given wealth, possessions and honor, literally everything they desire. Yet one has the “power to enjoy them” and the other does not. The first man can barely remember hard times “because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.” Not so the second. He is never satisfied, he has no power to enjoy what has been given him. The Teacher says “a stillborn child is better off than he.”
With irony that the Teacher would appreciate, after reading that section I opened my Bank of America app and their slogan popped up: “What do you want the power to do?” I thought, “I want the power to enjoy the life that God has given me! I want to enjoy this gift of a sabbatical.” Money can give many things (“money answers everything,” Ecclesiastes 11:19 says), but it cannot give the power to enjoy.
Notice that it is not only the wealth and honor but “the power to enjoy them” that is said to be the gift of God. It is not something we work up or fake, it is a fruit of the Spirit. And God loves to give this gift to his children.
“I commend joy,” says the Teacher in chapter 8. Let me add my hearty amen. I recommend it! Learn to receive this free gift before it is too late. As a practical way to walk in the light with this, think of some things that you want to do or would love to do. You know they would be life-giving or they have been in the past. Talk with your brothers about this and give them permission to look for and name the excuses that they hear for not doing or working towards doing those things now.
Then name those excuses and receive the gift by doing that thing! I can’t wait to hear the stories.
Reminder: sign up for our next Light Night on September 21st and our first Mens Retreat coming in November!