Articles
Thoughts About Life by Dee Bowman
Solomon was the wisest man of his age. When he was but a young man and had just ascended to the throne of his father, God appeared to him in Gibeon and said, “Ask what I shall give thee.” Solomon, showing that he was a wise man even then, said, “Give me an understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and bad...” (I Kings 3:1-ff). God did according to His word and gave him the mind of minds, a wisdom far above all that were before him.
Solomon ran an experiment with life, outlined in the book of Ecclesiastes. He decided to consider “all things that are done under heaven,” to see what had value and what did not. His experiment ran the gamut of life. He searched in science, in politics, in agriculture, in philanthropy, in pleasure, looking in every nook and cranny to ascertain “what was that good for men all the days of their life.”
With a mind filled with determination, he lived life “with all the gusto you can.” He sought wisdom and knowledge and found that “in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (1:18). He worked on inequities and he saw that “that which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered” (2:15). He concluded that “it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting” (7:2), that there is no good to be had in reminiscing about the “good ol’ days” (7:10), that prosperity and adversity both have a place in life (7:14), that life is filled with all sorts of inequities (9:11), that a reputation which was a lifetime in the building can be destroyed in a few minutes by just one misplaced word (10:1), that there is no such thing as a secret (10:20), that diligence (9:10), humility (9:12) and prudence (9:16) are a necessary part of good life here.
Mostly his experiment is finished in sheer frustration, for he says, “Then the dust shall return to the earth as it was: and the spirit to God who gave it” (11:9). And in one last gasp of desperation he concludes, “Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity.”
Life here us what you make it. Its real value is to be properly measured by your determination to live it with the joy of salvation in it. To live a truly happy and satisfying life without God in it is a foolish endeavor doomed to sure failure. And a mind not tuned to the word of God for its guidance and success is a demented mind which in the end produces nothing but sorrow.
And so, “let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” he says, “Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13). A man’s focus must be other-worldly, his attitude that of a sojourner or he will never be truly happy. Dee Bowman
