APR 11

Ecclesiastes 1:12-15
Memorise Ecclesiastes 1:14
“That which is crooked cannot be made straight”

So to try to answer the question of ‘what is the meaning of life’, Solomon will now exercise the first gift that God has given to him, and that is his intellect or wisdom, to try to find an answer. He says he gave his heart over to seek and search out wisdom, concerning all things that are done under heaven - that is all the temporal things that are done here on the earth. In a sense he decided to become a researcher, to study life as it is, and try to understand it. This act, this restlessness of man, he says, is a ‘sore travail’ that God has given to man to be exercised (literally means depressed, afflicted or busied) with. What he speaks of here is the innate curiosity that man has in life and towards all things that he sees. Unlike animals, we are creatures who want and need to know, and are not satisfied with just accepting and enjoying the things we see around us.

Yet at the end of his study, his conclusion was that all the works that are done under the sun are but vanity and vexation of spirit. Note that the wisdom being described here is not that of godly wisdom, but the worldly wisdom or just the intellectual pursuits of the unregenerate. The more he observed man and their works, the more he realised the futility and frustration that is evident there. Through human effort alone, the crooked can never be made straight. There are so many things out there that are wanting, that is deficient in some way or another, and nothing can be done to rectify it. There are just simply so many things wrong with this life and this world that the more one knows about it, the more frustrating and futile one feels. Human wisdom and human effort alone can do nothing at all. Education, culture, society can do nothing to fix the human condition. Man prides himself on his knowledge and understanding, and thinks himself to be great because of all his studies in the sciences and arts, and his great technological advances. Yet at the end of it all we must realise that we are but all crooked sinners, we are all found wanting. Only Jesus Christ and the Word of God can make all the wrongs right, and the crooked straight.

And so to answer the question, yes, wisdom is vain. But note that what we are speaking of here is the wisdom of the world – the intellectual pursuits of man. If that is all we hope for in this life, and that is what we take pride in, then Solomon would tell us, that it is a vain life!

Thought: Which do I respect more, the wisdom of man or the wisdom of God?
Prayer: Lord, may I always seek after godly wisdom, and not the wisdom of the world.