There is only one fate for everyone!

We have been learning how to study the wisdom texts on your own and part of this is knowing that the books of wisdom are not just concerned with deep theology and hypothetical things, but also, practical ways to live today,

Here are four more principles that we need to embrace that come directly from God’s wisdom and we can get these four principles from what some people call the most depressing and existential book in all of the bible; Ecclesiastes 9:1-12.

1. There is one fate for everyone: Death (9:1-6). 

"Indeed, I took all this to heart and explained it all: the righteous, the wise, and their works are in God’s hands. People don’t know whether to expect love or hate."

In these first few verses, We are taught that all of our works are in God’s hands and, because God is beyond us, we don’t often know whether he will love or hate what we do. 

We ask ourselves, Did I make the right decision? Did I do the right thing? Though it sounds depressing, these are questions we often can never know with certainty. 

But he continues,  

"Everything lies ahead of them.  Everything is the same for everyone: there is one fate for the righteous and the wicked, for the good and the bad, for the clean and the unclean, for the one who sacrifices and the one who does not sacrifice."

He explains that we struggle to know the heart and mind of the God beyond our understanding and the only thing we can really know for sure is death. Death is the “Great Equalizer.” Death doesn’t care about your thoughts or opinions. The wealthy can’t buy your way out of death, the famous can’t tweet their way into more time. 

He adds,

"As it is for the good, so it is for the sinner; as for the one who takes an oath, so for the one who fears an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun: there is one fate for everyone."

Sadly, It doesn’t even matter how good or how evil you are: in the end, even if you were Mother Teresa, and can afford the greatest doctors, nothing can buy you more time. We will all eventually move to Florida where the Grim Reaper will eventually find us...

2. We are sinners, but there is hope.

"In addition, the hearts of people are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live—after that they go to the dead. But there is hope for whoever is joined with all the living, since a live dog is better than a dead lion."

Wisdom teaches us that we are all sinners, that our lives are bracketed by pain and suffering, and then we die but there is hope; even a living dog is better than a dead lion. But don’t move past this point too quickly. 

He is not talking about your favorite yorkie or your pet beagle. For those in the OT, dogs were wild scavenging animals.  Dogs were considered unclean and cities were often plagued by packs of roaming mangy dogs who would tear into trash pits and fight in the streets. If the author were writing this today, he would have been more likely to say something like a stray cat.

The point is there is hope for whoever is joined with all the living, since a stray cat is better than a dead lion.

For example, when we lived outside of Detroit, the kids and I would daily trap and kill rats in our backyard. We would also catch the occasional squirrel and opossum, but the worst thing to catch was always a stray cat….

But his point is that it is better to be a mangy stray animal than a dead prestigious one. It is better to be a living human being with flaws and debt and pain, than to be a famous dead president or a dead famous actress, because even with all our problems and pain and suffering, a living person has the potential to try again and to do more. While the dead person may be revered and looked up to, like the mighty lion, they are still just as dead.   

He continues,

"For the living know that they will die, but the dead don’t know anything. There is no longer a reward for them because the memory of them is forgotten. Their love, their hate, and their envy have already disappeared, and there is no longer a portion for them in all that is done under the sun."

There is nothing for the dead to do. Life is over for them. No more revenge, no more envy, no more sin, but also no more play, no more walks under the moon, no more time to love your family, no more opportunities to say your sorry, or time to binge watch Netflix. So knowing that our time is limited, what are we to do? 

3. Enjoy your life now. 

"Go, eat your bread with pleasure, and drink your wine with a cheerful heart, for God has already accepted your works." 

He tells us to enjoy our lives now. Notice he doesn’t say anything about fighting over theology or debating people about politics. He says enjoy life, but sadly, Christians tend to act as though enjoying life is a sin. That if you are having a good time doing something, it must be evil, but we have to understand that enjoying this life is part of the blessing from God. 

We need to understand and recognize that enjoying this life is not only good, but enjoying this life is a way in which we honor God. Reading our bibles, praying, and pondering the deeper things of theology is not the only way to honor our lord and savior. Part of honoring God is to be thankful for your many blessings and to enjoy them. 

Imagine buying your kids a very special present and they tell you that they love it and yet you never actually enjoy it. The blessing just sits on their shelf never being played with, you would question whether they actually appreciate that gift….

This is why Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 says,

"There is nothing better for man than to eat, drink, and enjoy his work. I have seen that even this is from God’s hand, because who can eat and who can enjoy life apart from Him?"

He says that we should eat our food and enjoy every bite, that we should drink our favorite drink, and do it all with a cheerful heart that understands that all of the blessings that we have come from God, because apart from God it has no meaning or real enjoyment. 

He adds that we should let our clothes be white and never let oil be lacking on your head and this means that you should be wearing clothes of celebration and happiness and clean yourself up. 

White clothing was associated with festivals and celebrations and today, though we might associate oil and hair with teenagers, this is actually talking about fragrant oils and perfumes. He is saying that we should live this life as if we are excited about it. He is saying that we should get up, dress up, and live this life as if it is a celebration, but it doesn’t end there. 

He adds, 

"Enjoy life with the wife you love all the days of your fleeting life, which has been given to you under the sun, all your fleeting days. For that is your portion in life and in your struggle under the sun."

I love this part, because Solomon was a man with hundreds of wives. He could easily have said, "Enjoy life with the youngest and hottest girl in your haram," but he doesn’t. In this moment of wisdom, he says "go to your wife," the one that you devoted yourself to in the beginning. The one who knows you, the spouse who knows your faults, who knows who you really are, who loves you despite the fact that you snore, that you tend to walk around in your underwear at home, the one who loves you despite the fact that you put the remote control in the refrigerator. 

In God’s wisdom, the author tells us to pick just one spouse and to live your life with them. He says, live with this person and love them all the days of your fleeting life. 

This is a portion of the blessing from God and we need to train ourselves to be content with what we have, because this is the key to having satisfaction with this life now.

"But godliness with contentment is a great gain.

For we brought nothing into the world,

and we can take nothing out.

But if we have food and clothing,

we will be content with these."

1 Timothy 6:6-8

If we learn to be content with what we have, we will appreciate every new gift even more. If we are happy with the house we have, the car we have, the clothes we have, and the life we have, every new blessing will be nothing more than icing on a cake that you already love and enjoy. 

Like enjoying sitting on the beach and taking in the warmth of the sun, we can be content in that simple pleasure, but when someone comes along and offers us a cold drink to go along with this moment, we don’t expect it and we were already content with what we had, but the cold drink just adds to the experience. 

But life is not just relaxation. We all tend to make this mistake and think that the best moments are when we are on vacation, but this is nonsense. If vacations are your best moments than the majority of your life is pretty awful, because rest and vacations only take up a tiny fraction of our lives, the large majority of the rest of our lives is filled with work, sleep, and work-related activity. 

The author finishes by saying that part of enjoying life is living every aspect of it to the fullest.

"Whatever your hands find to do, do with all your strength, because there is no work, planning, knowledge, or wisdom in Sheol where you are going."

On average most Americans will work at least 35-40 years before they are able to retire, this means that the average American will “retire” (meaning they will no longer work a full time job) around the age of 65. So considering that the average life expectancy is 78, you will only be able to enjoy around 13 years of full-time relaxation, which means that most of us will work at least three times as long as we will be retired. 

That is sad only if you don’t realize that we are called to not only be content in our leisure, but also in our labor. The reality is that we can only really enjoy our leisure time if we are actually working. 

Ecc 5:19, 

"God has also given riches and wealth to every man, and He has allowed him to enjoy them, take his reward, and rejoice in his labor. This is a gift of God..."

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, is head of the department of Psychology at the university of Chicago and he did some major research into the link between happiness and work. He discovered that most people were, in fact, happier at work than at rest. This led to his best selling book, called “Flow,” which outlines the importance of having both work and relaxation in our lives. (Click this link to get a copy for yourself)

For the study, he had his participants keep pagers on them that would go off at random throughout the day. When paged, the participants would record what they were doing as well as their emotional state. By adding up this data, he found that people were actually happier at work, even though when asked afterward people did not recognize that they were actually happy.

In his research, he found that people are most content and happy when they are working through a challenge and towards a goal. So, as it turns out, God built us for work and it is only in the ebb and flow of work and relaxation that we are our happiest. Again, Christians often make the mistake of thinking that we should be looking forward to resting in the Lord, but in truth, that was never God’s intention. 

We are told in Genesis that God created man and woman and the first thing God did was to give them the job of tending to the Garden of Eden. It says that God, "took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it" (Genesis 2:15) meaning, the first thing God did to mankind was put them to work, because that is what he built us for. 

And this just makes sense, because We were made in the image of our God and our God is a creator. Jesus told us, "My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working" (John 5:17).

You need to embrace the fact that you can only appreciate rest after you have worked for it.

Sadly, we see this negatively played out for us in people who find themselves stuck in the welfare cycle. Welfare was designed to help families supplement their income until they can afford to live on their own, but the problem is that welfare sometimes gets people stuck. My wife and I experienced this first hand. This causes depression, because we were created by God to work, but this depression causes many people to lose their motivation to even try, which creates a cycle of dependence. 

This is a major problem and Because of this, there have been many recent studies into the link between welfare and depression. One study writes,

"Depression is a critical barrier to employment among welfare-recipient parents. Depression prevalence rates among welfare recipients are reported to be as high as one-third (Danziger et al. 2000; Polit, London, and Martinez 2001), and rates are closer to one-half in samples of disadvantaged groups, such as young welfare-recipient parents (Quint, Bos, and Polit 1997)." 

The problem is that programs like welfare, which were designed to help people get back on their feet can actually create a barrier to employment by perpetuating depression, which hinders a person from getting off of welfare. 

This doesn’t mean that such programs are bad. In fact, there was a stretch of several years while I was going to school where my family and I were on food and medical assistance. These programs help millions of Americans, but the government often times ignores God’s plan for our lives. Scripture teaches us that we should enjoy our downtime, but only in conjunction with work.

"So I commended enjoyment because there is nothing better for man under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy himself, for this will accompany him in his labor during the days of his life that God gives him under the sun." Ecc 8:15

This attitude of wisdom simply teaches us that “Life is uncertain, so enjoy all of it to the fullest.”

One last example. In 1997, a young and very influential and rich woman was being driven home late one night when some paparazzi swarmed to take her picture after a long night of drinking. Her driver was drunk and was speeding to avoid the tabloids, but after entering a tunnel, he lost control of the car killing Diana, the princess of Wales. 

In the end, this wife and mother of two was killed due to drunken negligence, but also for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And despite her money, her position, her fame, and all of her influence, she could not claim one more day. She was 36 when she died. 

The attitude of wisdom teaches us to not put our faith and trust in our stuff or things or in time. For all of these will someday fail us. An attitude of wisdom teaches us to appreciate what we have while we have it. It teaches us to not shun work, but embrace it as an important part of our lives, to work hard to earn our relaxation and to love those around us as if today could be our last. 

We read,

"Again I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or bread to the wise, or riches to the discerning, or favor to the skillful; rather, time and chance happen to all of them. For man certainly does not know his time: like fish caught in a cruel net or like birds caught in a trap, so people are trapped in an evil time as it suddenly falls on them."

Life is sometimes cruel and it can come down on us without warning and though God knows the day of our death, we do not. 

Let us all strive to practice an attitude of wisdom. Let each and everyone of us strive to appreciate every day, to love those around us, to live a life that is full of work and wonder, a life filled with happiness despite the pain. Let us all live godly lives and enjoy them while we can.