Ecclesiastes and the Book of John

12/07/10…Father, what I write now, I write to You. My hopes are one day my son reads this. For in my life, I so much want to be there for him to give advice, and yet my life has mostly been spent apart from him. Now at age 16, he is becoming a man. There is no magic threshold when a boy becomes a man. There is no magic light switch that suddenly turns on and your consciousness goes from a boy to a man. Instead, becoming a man is something that defines itself over time, mostly by one decision at a time, collectively adding up over years.

 

When I really think about what I am pondering, I realize my decisions over time indeed have created the man I am today, for better or for worse. Every day I have decisions to make. When I see someone who is an outcast, do I make them feel like an incast? When I see someone who is in dire need, do I pass by or do I stop? When my wife needs me to talk about my day, do I or do I retreat where intimacy is not required? When I need to give of myself to my parents as much as they have given to me, do I? When I have a choice to open Your Word and study, do I? When I have a chance to say something about someone, do I say something positive or negative? These types of questions are just the tip of the iceberg of questions I face every day. Each day I answer them, sometimes in ways glorifying You Father, but sometimes in ways only glorifying me, and even worse sometimes in ways pointing people towards anything but You. And so at middle age, I find myself defined by how I answer these daily questions facing me every day I exist.

 

How do I face the bombardment of these decisions every day? Maybe by starting each day in Your Word. Maybe by praying Your will for that day is done in my life. Maybe by trying to listen to those quiet thoughts when You speak to me in the still silence of morning before the days distractions take hold. Maybe by asking Your Spirit within to intercede on my behalf. Indeed, maybe some of all this. Otherwise how do I stand a chance against the principalities of darkness, or the illusion of the world, or my own selfish tendencies?

 

Crossing the threshold in becoming a man is a clear realization that as a man, we are nothing apart from You. Instead we are only a shell, and a shell that may or may not be good at presenting a front to others. Is this not what the Preacher came to realize at the end of Ecclesiastes? There is no front before God. Yes, man’s all is in God, because every decision I make will come before my Maker in the end, including as the Preacher said…”every secret thing, whether good or evil.” I pause to reflect on this.

 

And then I go straight into reading the Book of John. I am amazed at how close Ecclesiastes and the Book of John relate to one another. When reading Ecclesiastes and then immediately reading John, I find an almost seamless flow from the Old to New Testament. And I also find hope.

 

Jesus washed all my stains.