Everything Is Meaningless

Light is sweet...... A Sunday Amen.

One of many portraits, at the cusp of leaving youth | shot on Canon

Perhaps the reason I love the book of Ecclesiastes is because I am a deep skeptic at heart. Or that I am deep. Which makes me extremely philosophical. Not negative. I find I go back again and again, many a dizzying trips around the sun, learning in the end, that there is spiritual significance in a life that would otherwise be meaningless.

I am often too honest. This book is full of honesty, confessions, doubts and struggle.

It is said that King Solomon wrote it, yet who really knows? It hardly makes sense, yet in a way, it does make sense. Song of Songs, as it opens with Beloved, is so intimate and sensual, that perhaps the depth of which he lived and expressed himself taught, that in the end, much can feel meaningless. Lover: “All beautiful you are my darling: there is no flaw in you.” Yet, sadly, we are flawed. Perfectly imperfect.

So we go back to Ecclesiastes 12

1 Remember your Creator
    in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
    and the years approach when you will say,
    “I find no pleasure in them”—
2 before the sun and the light
    and the moon and the stars grow dark,
    and the clouds return after the rain;
3 when the keepers of the house tremble,
    and the strong men stoop,
when the grinders cease because they are few,
    and those looking through the windows grow dim;
4 when the doors to the street are closed
    and the sound of grinding fades;
when people rise up at the sound of birds,
    but all their songs grow faint;
5 when people are afraid of heights
    and of dangers in the streets;
when the almond tree blossoms
    and the grasshopper drags itself along
    and desire no longer is stirred.
Then people go to their eternal home
    and mourners go about the streets.

6 Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
    and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
    and the wheel broken at the well,
7 and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
    and the spirit returns to God who gave it.

8 “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher.
    “Everything is meaningless!” 

Carry, in your heart, the sweet and innocent Light of the days of your youth.

Remember Him.