All the readings set down for this week in the annual church diary (Australian Church Resources), leading into the season of Advent, are from Ecclesiastes:
Monday: (1:1-11) ‘Vanity of vanities…! All is vanity’
Tuesday: (2:1-16) Ditto
Wednesday: (3:1-15) ‘For everything there is a season’
Thursday: (8:14-9:10) ‘the same fate comes to all, to the righteous & the wicked’
Friday: (11:9-12:14) ‘The end of the matter … Fear God & keep his commandments’
Fatalistic?
Perhaps, but it’s a great reminder to all of us who’re inclined to get carried away by our own ideas, to keep our feet on the ground. Being realistic about life in general, & our own life in particular, is a good idea. Especially in a time when movies, TV shows, advertising all want us to wander off into some cloud-cuckoo land where we can escape the boundaries of ‘muscle & blood, skin & bone’. The old Tennessee Ernie Ford song had a fair dose of Ecclesiastes in it:
You load 16 tons & what do you get:
another day older & deeper in debt.
St Peter, don’t you call me ‘cos I can’t go -
I owe my soul to the company store
