Ecclesiastes Creates Silence

“Ecclesiastes creates silence.”We seem to have come to this phrase over and over again during our study of Ecclesiastes. The book’s author, Solomon, nearly demands a kind of silence, declaiming repeatedly, “vanity of vanities!” and calling our earthly endeavors “striving after wind.” How fitting is this term—silence—to describe what Ecclesiastes creates and what it calls for.Its message particularly relevant to believers living in the modern age. Solomon experienced everything—worldly pleasure, wealth, wisdom, work—to a degree that exceeds what’s available to most us—yet he found himself wholly unsatisfied and declared all of it meaningless. In this regard, his book also seems fitting to a post-modern age. How frequently we strive after worldly pursuits but find our self led instead to depression and emptiness! And how unfortunately familiar are we with that feeling, “there is nothing new under the sun”!It is important to remember, though, that silence and despair is not the end point. In fact, it’s hardly the point at all. After our final study this Sunday, I had the opportunity to talk to a few brothers and sisters to ask them what they have taken away from Ecclesiastes. Elise Hines commented to me, “I felt like I knew what it was about,” explaining, though, how wrong she’d been proven. “I came in with the mindset asking, ‘what else is new?’” Instead, she met a fresh revelation of Christ. “Everything,” she explained, “is meaningless without Christ. . . [but] we have Christ!”The end message, clearly, is grace. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (Eph 2:8). What a gift it is to realize that He alone is our satisfaction, that He alone satisfies the longing in our hearts!Jenny Cummings, another young woman I interviewed, recounted to me how she has attended church her entire life with an attitude that sought after wisdom. “I was gaining knowledge,” she told me, explaining how even biblical wisdom came to be a distraction which pried her focus from God. Ecclesiastes, she said, “challenges you to be in the presence of God.”Isn’t this grace? Not to seek, not to do, but simply to rest in Him and turn your eyes upon the cross and what He’s done? “So must the Son of Man be lifted up” (John 3:14). This is not a call to laziness or complacency, but to live in a manner that can only rely on the power of the cross. Josh Kercho told me how realizing that nothing satisfies him how God does frees him from worry. Because of Ecclesiastes, Josh is learning to rest in Him. He professed, “God created me to enjoy Him!”Justin Pearson re-emphasized, “All the pursuits we have apart from God are meaningless.” Apart from God. Where, then, does this challenge our focus to be? On Christ and on Him alone. As Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “Now to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen” (Eph 3:20-21).by Allison Doornik