He Is

DEVOTION

ECCLESIASTES

HE IS

Eccl 6:7-12

7 All man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied. 8 What advantage has a wise man over a fool? What does a poor man gain by knowing how to conduct himself before others? 9 Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. 10 Whatever exists has already been named, and what man is has been known; no man can contend with one who is stronger than he. 11 The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone? 12 For who knows what is good for a man in life, during the few and meaningless days he passes through like a shadow? Who can tell him what will happen under the sun after he is gone?

NIV

It is sort of sad as to how Solomon sees the life of a man, but again he is looking at man from man’s point of view. God has a totally different view of man, than Solomon has. Yet Solomon is inspired by God to write these words about the futility of the man who lives for himself. This is the idea of all his efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied. The point is about all living for self and self always needs more. When we live and put all our efforts into satisfying our own wants, we never have enough, and it does not matter if a person is wise or foolish, the result is the same. Rich or poor, wise or foolish, if driven by greed, neither are ever satisfied. It is better to be content with what we can see, what we have, then to always have roving eyes, always looking to the more we can have, always trying to fulfill our craving for more. It is sort of like the craving for a White Castle, one is just not enough. But alas all that type of lifestyle is just a chasing after the wind. It is meaningless, or as in the Hebrew, vanity. We are not sure about the rest of this section. What does it mean that whatever exists has already been named and what man is has been known? We think it has to be seen in light of the next few words about no man can contend with one who is stronger than he. This stronger one would have to be God. What man can contend with God? God knew everything before he created man. He knew Adam before he formed him. Everything regarding man, God has already known, which would include us. He knew every, all the days of our life, before we were born. How can we contend with that? How can we judge that as the direct meaning of the Hebrew implies? How do we rightly determine, judge, the idea that God is. He has no past, or future, he just is. He has no beginning, no end, he just is. He has always been and will always be, he just is. Is denotes present tense, he is always in the present, thus he knows before what we think before we think it. It would not matter how many words we could write. Whole books have been written about the omnipresence of God and yet they have less meaning then those two words, he is. No man can tell the future, most certainly his own. Only God knows what will happen in our life. We can make all our plans and they might be meaningless, as God has something else in store for us. How vain to think we have our life all planned out accordingly as if we are the masters of our own course. Do we think God just sits up there and waits to see what we try to do? He already knows what we will try to do, he ordained our life, and he is the master of our life. If he even stops thinking about us, poof, we don’t exist anymore. We actually have no clue what life will bring our way, and we have no clue what will happen in the life of others after we are gone. No one can predict anything will happen, not even the next day, or for that matter the next hour. Sure, the weather people might be able to predict it will rain in the next hour or so, but then they could be wrong, it has happened. But we are talking about our life. We don’t even know if we will be alive tomorrow, much less what will happen during the day. Sure we know we are supposed to go to work, and what that work consists of. But do we know we will get there? Anything could happen which interrupts what we think we will do the next day, or the next hour. But God knows because he is. So we need to live with the “I AM” as our main source of everything, our daily life, our whole life, for simply put, He is.