I just realized that I hadn’t written anything on this blog since February. It wasn’t an intentional decision, but life hasn’t allowed much space for writing in the last several months. It was a busier-than-normal semester at the college combined with my daughter’s high school graduation and everything that comes with that. I also released my third book in February that I wrote with my friend Daniel McCoy. I’m thankful for the change of pace that comes with summer in higher education. (Yes, we do still work during the summer! It’s just a different kind of work.)
I’ve been doing some study from the book of Ecclesiastes lately. This is partly related to a book that I hope to write next year. I also spoke from Ecclesiastes at my daughter’s baccalaureate service earlier this month. The more I’ve studied the book over the last several months, the more I’ve been impressed by a puzzle that exists at the heart of its message. We know well the message of meaninglessness that is at the heart of the book. 38 times the author uses the Hebrew word hebel to describe our existence “under the sun.” This word describes something fleeting and insubstantial like a puff of wind or a quickly disappearing vapor.1 The KJV and ESV translate it as vanity. The NIV uses the word meaningless. “Meaningless, meaningless,” he says, “Everything is meaningless.”
It’s not surprising that Ecclesiastes has earned a reputation for dark melancholy. There’s not a lot of Hobby Lobby wall art coming from Ecclesiastes. How many of you are hanging this up in the mud room of your house? “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
What is a little surprising is that several times in Ecclesiastes we are extorted not to despair but to celebrate.
There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God. (Ecc. 2:24)
I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. (Ecc. 3:12-13)
How do we make sense of this puzzle? Isn’t it kind of perverse celebrate in the face of meaninglessness? Isn’t this the root of all nihilist humor where the only reasonable response to the abyss is to laugh into its nothingness? Well, that’s one interpretation I suppose. But that isn’t at all what Ecclesiastes is saying.
Think of it this way. A prerequisite for gratitude is knowing and appreciating the limits of a thing. You cannot be thankful for a bicycle if you genuinely expect that bicycle to take you to the moon. In the same way, you cannot be thankful for something that is hebel if you genuinely expect that thing to be something permanent and central to your existence “under the sun.” This is where all idols are born – when we misunderstand the limits of hebel. We desire for our possessions, our relationships, our work, our accolades, our nation, or our education to be something more than hebel and we are inevitably let down and disappointed by these ineffectual and impermanent idols. In our chronic disappointment, gratitude becomes the perversity. How could we possibly be grateful for the things of our life when they only seem to leave us empty?
Well, perhaps you weren’t designed to be filled by these things. There are limitations to hebel and it is only once we have discovered those limitations that we are free to actually live a life of gratitude. I can be grateful for all the big and small things in my life only when those things are placed in their proper perspective. They are hebel. And that’s all they will ever be. It doesn’t mean I should despise them or reject them. No, I accept them and even celebrate them for what they are. If you know that something is a vapor, you don’t despair that it’s a vapor. You enjoy it while you have the chance without placing it at the center of your existence. Most importantly, you recognize that the hebel of life under the sun is a gift from God – the one thing that is not under the sun and the one thing that is not hebel.
In short, discovering the meaninglessness of life under the sun is necessary to all gratitude and even joy.
- This also happens to be the name of Adam and Eve’s son who was killed by his brother Cain. Abel, the first victim of homicide, demonstrated the extent to which life is but a vapor. ↩︎
Chad Ragsdale 
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