I was having a hard time fully comprehending the message from the book of Ecclesiastes. There were parts that seemed depressing and discouraging but I found a great resource which helped me better understand this book. I read all of Proverbs, which was mostly insightful, encouraging, and reassuring. The following book of Ecclesiastes seemed more cynical in its message and I wanted to make better sense of it, as I knew there was a lot more to it. When you realize the author’s point, it provides a very enlightening experience reading through the book.
Here is a poignant part from an essay which really explains Ecclesiastes:
“If everything that exists is in a state of perpetual transmutation, how can moral effort produce any satisfaction which will not be swept away in the universal process of change? The thesis which supplies a solution of this problem is this: There is in the consciousness of moral activity itself apart from any extraneous results a peculiar satisfaction which sufficiently justifies moral endeavor notwithstanding all the shifting instability of things which goes to make up the kind of a world in which we live. This peculiar satisfaction is characterized by a joy inherent in the conscientious activity itself, which continues to persist as long as the moral intention of the will is maintained; any other pleasure derived from results, i.e., things themselves, is insufficient to satisfy human nature permanently because the nature of such pleasure is volatile, like a vapor, unsubstantial, temporary, and eternally dissipating into perpetual change. This moral joy is a reality, as the testimony of all those who obey God's commandments proves; and these same persons who have put God's law first in their lives know also by experience that any other pleasure is a delusion and is powerless to satisfy either saint or sinner, wise or unwise.” (https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/475590)
One of my favorite parts from Ecclesiastes so far:
“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”— before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; 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; 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; 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.”
Ecclesiastes 12:1-5 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/ecc.12.5.NIV