Deeper Thoughts on Ecclesiastes 1:1-11

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Ecclesiastes 1:4
A generation goes and a generation comes,
But the earth remains forever.
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This was illustrated really well to me when I was out in West Virginia. The
town of Kaymoor was a thriving community less than a hundred years. The
mines produced massive amounts of coal, train traffic was more busy than
some of the major cities. The mines stretched 3 miles into the mountain,
hundreds of people made their living there. If you go there now you'll find
a few remains of the town and the mine. The national park has preserved
some of it for the sake of preserving history, but it's gone. The forest
has reclaimed everything. The wood is rotting, the meal is rusting, and
everything is falling apart. Man's mark on that place has been forgotten.

There are man made things that have remained for hundreds, even thousands of
years. They have remained because people have fought the forces of nature
to preserve them. Yet most remain as a historical site, a memory of what
was. Not something that is. The names of great people have remained for
everyone to know and remember, yet what good is that to them? The only
thing that remains of them is their impact on other people, whether good or
bad. The bad people remain as villains, the good as heros. History has a
tendancy to amplify the strong characteristic.

Remember this as your choose the direction of your life. The only thing
that will remain is the impact you have in the lives of other people. It is
your choice as to whether that will be a good thing or a bad thing.

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Ecclesiastes 1:8
All things are wearisome;
Man is not able to tell it.
The eye is not satisfied with seeing,
Nor is the ear filled with hearing.
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There is no activity that is beyond our capability to make it into drudgery.
Work is a four letter word and there's a reason they pay us to do it. We
may think our favorite hobby would be a job we'd never get tired of, but do
it long enough and it gets old. I enjoy hiking, but if that was my job
there would be days I didn't want to go. We won't be able to find
satisfaction in anything here, we have a short attention span. We thrive on
new things, different things, special things. If we had to eat filet minon
for every meal we'd be tired of it by the end of the week.

How many movies have we seen? How many TV shows? How many sunsets? How
many grand vistas? How many famous paintings? After seeing them, did any
of us say "I never need to see another movie". Or "I never need to see the
sunset again." No, we continue to search for beauty, mystery, new things.
We sit around work and talk about upcoming movies, we'll talk about it for
months before the movie comes out. We see the movie, love it, talk about it
a couple of days afterwards, and it's gone from memory. We could pick our
favorite painting out of the Louvre, hang it in our living room, and we'd
stop noticing it within a month.

I'm a music nut, I have a large collection. I've never reached the point
where I've said to myself "I've heard all I need to hear." I'll listen to
something over and over, but eventually I get burned out and need something
new. I do get tired of hearing people talk and noise, but eventually my
ears itch for a new input.

None of this is to say that the things we like, our hobbies, movies, or
music, are wrong and we shouldn't want them. It's that if we expect them to
fulfill our hunger we will always be left hungry. I'm almost 29 years old.
I've eaten approximately 29 x 365 x 3 = 31755 meals in my lifetime. Right
now it's almost lunch time and I'm hungry. Not one of those meals, even all
of them put together, has ended my hunger. They filled me for a short time,
but I became hungry again. We don't stop eating, but we keep in perspective
that this will only fill us for a short time. Whether I spend $5 or $50 on
a meal, I will be hungry in a few hours and within the next couple of days I
will flush the processed food down the toilet. However, there is a place
where we can find final satisfaction for our desires:

John 4:10-14
Jesus answered and said to her, "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is
who says to you, 'Give Me a drink,' you would have asked Him, and He would
have given you living water."
She said to Him, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep;
where then do You get that living water? "You are not greater than our
father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his
sons and his cattle?"
Jesus answered and said to her, "Everyone who drinks of this water will
thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall
never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well
of water springing up to eternal life."

Notice that Jesus does not eliminate our desires, He provides an unending
source to fulfill our desires. If we seek Christ to fulfill our desires, we
can see the things in our life as a gift to enjoy for a short time instead
of seeing them as something that will fulfill us.

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Ecclesiastes 1:9-10
That which has been is that which will be,
And that which has been done is that which will be done.
So there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one might say,
"See this, it is new"?
Already it has existed for ages
Which were before us.
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I've heard this one explained before in terms of the First Law of
Thermodynamics:

First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can be changed from one form to another,
but it cannot be created or destroyed. The total amount of energy and matter
in the Universe remains constant, merely changing from one form to another.
The First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation) states that energy is always
conserved, it cannot be created or destroyed.

That's rather nerdy, but it's true. Nothing really is created or destroyed,
it only changes forms. No, King David didn't have an iPod. Jesus didn't
have an iBook. Solomon's Temple didn't have Wifi. But look of the themes
of the Bible. It reads a lot like today's newspaper. Murder, rape,
poverty, war, jealousy, lust, hate, etc. Same story, we're just more
efficient at it. I think God brings us to this so that we can again see the
futility of it all. Man is fallen, we're trapped in a broken world, we need
someone to rescue us. The world wants us to believe we've advanced, God is
showing us that we are just as much in need of a Savior as we were 2000
years ago.

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Ecclesiastes 1:11
There is no remembrance of earlier things;
And also of the later things which will occur,
There will be for them no remembrance
Among those who will come later still.
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What about history books? What about memorials? For most people, our
family will remember us for a couple of generations. Then we'll be
relegated to a place in a school geneological study and a tombstone that
someone might stumble across. A few will have a highway named after them,
though no one knows who that person is. Even fewer find a place in books or
historical films. But is anyone really remembered? Or is it just something
about them that is remembered? The farther we move forward in history the
less these people are remembered. Who they were distorts or fades away. In
the end, only God remains. We are but a wisp of smoke.

Lots of warm fuzzy thoughts from Solomon. It's all to remind us that this
world is fickle, nothing lasts, we have no hope in anything in this world.
Our Hope must come from a place that is not corrupted. Our meaning and our
purpose here means nothing outside of eternity. Jesus told us:

Matthew 6:19-21
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust
destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your
treasure is, there your heart will be also.