Bible in 90, Day 48: The conclusion of the matter

Ecclesiastes 3 – Song of Solomon 8

*image courtesy of gnmills at stock.xchng

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock’d them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.   Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley at http://www.bartleby.com/106/246.html

I hope the first half of today’s reading didn’t get you too depressed.  It sounds like Solomon is saying that all of life is useless, a pointless, endless cycle of give and take. If you leave out the last few verses of the book, you’re left with nothing but a hopeless look at the grave.  Better eat, drink, and be merry, cuz you gon’ die!  However, we’re missing something if we stop here:

The conclusion of the matter.

The whole book is Solomon’s reflection on his experiment to find life’s meaning.  Every good experiment has some failed attempts, right?  If we don’t read Solomon’s conclusion, we don’t get the point of his experiment.  We don’t benefit from his research and findings.  So, what does he conclude?

“Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (12:13)

Without God, life is vain and meaningless.  If this life is all there is, then I can see where Solomon’s desperate tone in the rest of the book comes from.  The best results of my hardest work will be passed on to other people I might not even know, maybe last a little while after I’m forgotten, and then crumble.

But those of us who are in Christ have a greater hope.  We know that everything we do has an eternal impact, whether for good or bad.  Unlike Ozymandias, our deeds will not crumble into the sands of time, but will precede us into eternity, and last there with us forever.

Let’s live lives that reflect this knowledge.  Let’s do all things as unto our Lord (1 Corinthians 10:31), knowing that there is more life after this one, and that this life will impact the one to come.  Let’s not despair, but put our hope in Christ!

*originally at Words of Reason

Bible in 90, Day 45: Fearfully and wonderfully

Psalm 135-Proverbs 6

I have these red birthmarks on my left forearm.  They’ve faded with age, but they used to be very red.  One day when I was about 5, I was minding my own business, eating my lunch at day care, when a teacher walked up behind me.  She looked down at my arm and saw these red splotches on my forearm.  She assumed I had a terrible rash/reaction, or worse yet, I was horribly burned.  She called out to another teacher, they both grabbed an arm and snatched me out of my chair.  They started running to the office, my feet barely scraping along the floor.  I asked in a panic, “Where are we going?” “The office!” they shouted.  Now I was really freaked out, the office was for disciplinary problems!  “Why!  What did I do wrong?” I pleaded.  “Nothing, it’s your arm!  The burns on your arm!”  “My birthmarks?” I said, confused.  They stopped.  “You have birthmarks?”  They put me down as let me resume my lunch.

I hated those birthmarks.

They were a constant source of low self-image for me all through my childhood.  Eventually, I stopped thinking about them as much, right about the time I got those warts on my knees.  Then there were the early teenage years, bulking up before the growth spurt, looking like a pudge.  Later it was my jacked up teeth.  I had a bad self-image most of my early life.

Psalm 139 is one of my favorite psalms.

It changed my view of myself radically as a teenager and early 20-something.  When I read David’s words, that I am fearfully and wonderfully made by God, it flipped everything around.  I no longer saw the birthmarks as in utero mistakes and blemishes on my forearm.  Now, I saw them as God’s own handiwork.  (By the way, it’s a big part of why I don’t have any tattoos, I got tats from God!)  I realized that the pudgy period was a step on the way to becoming the man God created me to be, from the womb!

God knits each one of us together in our mother’s womb.  He takes precious care to create each one of us.  David says that God’s thoughts toward us are innumerable (vv. 17-18).  I have a little jar of sand that an old friend gave me.  It serves as a reminder that, just as I couldn’t count the sand grains in that jar, let alone the whole earth, so also I couldn’t count God’s precious thoughts toward me.

In the last two verses, David makes an interesting application of this truth.  God knows us intimately.  Our forms were not hidden from Him while we were in the womb.  The same is true today.  We cannot hide from God, even in our inmost being.  God can search our hearts, He can test our thoughts.  He knows if there is any offensive way in us, and He can correct us.

Let’s remember that we are fearfully and wonderfully made.  We are just as God planned us.  Let’s love our own bodies, not in vanity and arrogance, but in appreciation of God’s handiwork.  Let’s remember that we are not hidden from God’s searching.  We cannot hide our sin from God, for He knows us inside and out.  Let’s bring our sins to God, including our self-hatred, confessing the wickedness of them, and seek both His forgiveness and His correcting truth.

*originally at Words of Reason