September 06, 2013
Melodic Sounds
Walking through the park the other day the quiet
stillness was interrupted by measured squeaking coming from the playground
swings. Unlike the annoying squeak of a pulley in need of oiling, the swings
rhythmic call brought back memories of youth, carefree summers and reaching for
the sky. I continued walking and when I had a line of sight through the trees I
could see a group of handicapped adults swinging and enjoying an unhurried field
trip. For a moment I felt a little envious that, even at their chronological
age, they were still enjoying their youth. “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”— (Eccl 12:1
NIV)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----The preacher at the church we attend has gone on some kind of kick against complaining. Several weeks ago he expounded upon all its evils. It seems he didn’t miss one. I like this guy. He doesn’t mind coloring his ideas a little angry. He was doing it so well that day, I could hardly keep from wondering if he was complaining.
-----And Solomon is an interesting study. When he was young, something about him tickled God, so God gave him a wish. And well, you know the story. He wanted wisdom. Then he proceeded to do everything foolishly. I always wondered how so much wisdom could account for so much foolishness.
-----But lately I've become aware of what I missed before. His harem turned him to the actual foolishness of idol worship by the time he was old. So, the Bible says he then did evil. God had appeared to him twice, in addition to giving him the greatest wisdom and immense wealth. There’s no other way to describe it. He became a fool.
-----Chapter two of Ecclesiastes reveals that he had built his house, the completion of which was twenty years into his reign. Solomon reigned forty years. This means Ecclesiastes was written within his last twenty years. Moreover, Ecclesiastes tells us he had amassed many concubines. These aren’t the same as wives. It was his wives who led him into idolatry. However, the last few verses of Ecclesiastes 7 are very interesting. “And I found more bitter than death the woman whose heart is snares and nets, and whose hands are fetters; he who pleases God escapes her, but the sinner is taken by her…One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found. Behold, this alone I found, that God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.” (Ecc 7:26,28-29) Was he reflecting upon his experience with all his women, especially his wives? I Kings 11:3 says he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines. If these are reflections on his women, then Ecclesiastes was written at least upon the edge of Solomon’s foolishness, and more likely, within it.
-----I read a chapter of Ecclesiastes every weekday. Over, and over, and over I read it. It is such a paradox. It is such an amassment of complaining. But it is Word of God. And again, I marvel at God's perfection, His precise use of even broken and rusty tools. Here He delivers a treatise on the perils of complaining by stimulating the experiences of a bitter old fool to disgorge a flood of complaints lodged from the mind set of only a temporal life. All is so vain if death is the end.
-----It’s as if Solomon saw it coming without looking beyond it. But just a thought of the greatness of all things being done perfectly well afterward, forever and ever and ever and ever, transforms the worst difficulties of now into a mildly unpleasant flash in the pan, if even that! The sacrificial propensity found in the mind of Christ is wholly enough to render from the unpleasantness in the pan more than a flash of joy. The house you built being left to another will be to his good, too, and that's good. Solomon should have read his Daddy more carefully, or at least heard my preacher, “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not keep with you.” (Ps 32:8-9)
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment