Scripture: Ecclesiastes 11, 12
The end of Ecclesiastes 12 says: Of the making of many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” When grad students hear these words, they are both surprised and delighted. When so few people understand the complexity of academia, it’s as if the author of Ecclesiastes actually knows their experience!
Other words in this text also connect with my experiences of campus ministry. Chapter 11 encourages one to try pretty much anything and everything, for as verse 6 says “you do not know which will succeed, whether this or that, or whether both will do equally well.” This seems to describe academic research – and ministry in an academic setting – quite well: So much feels like you’re simply guessing and trying things, not being certain of what will succeed. It is an act of sowing seeds and trusting that God will take care of them.
Much of life remains a mystery. As chapter 11, verse 5 says: “we do not know the path of the wind or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb.” These words were written several thousand years ago, but they remain true today. Even after much studying and research, we still do not really know how bodies are formed. We have learned much over the years about birth and infertility, and yet there are still many people who would love to have children who are not able to – and many people who still die in childbirth.
Problem named in the text
Ecclesiastes speaks to how life is complicated. There is much that we do not understand. And not only is life complicated, it can also be very difficult, as I expect many of us were reminded of as we think of the events of the past days and past year, both what happened in the world and closer to home.
Ecclesiastes 11:8 says, Remember that there will be days of darkness, days when you will not be able to see what is ahead of you, when you will not know the way, and when you will wonder about why you are doing this. Days when you believe that everything is meaningless, and everything to come is meaningless.
The text speaks further about the coming days of trouble at the beginning of chapter 12. These words can be interpreted as speaking of the challenges of old age, when the body breaks down and one is burdened by loss. As old age comes, you become familiar with hospitals, and you attend funerals instead of weddings. It is a season of much loss and sadness. [pause]
And so the author cautions us to make the best of it while we can! The words here speak not only to those who are older, but to all of us. Who has not regretted a failure to make the most of something while it lasted? Who has not experienced loss and hardship? Who has not noticed the rising costs of food and the increasing number of people using food banks? Who does not wonder why and how long, O Lord?
The days of trouble spoken about in Chapter 12, when people are afraid and when life is hard, relate to all of us today.
Everything stinks / is difficult
After speaking about the difficulties of life, the author ends with a grand summary of this section and the whole book, saying that ‘Everything is meaningless.’ (Eccl 12:8)
If you are familiar with the book of Ecclesiastes, you might know that these words “everything is meaningless” are translated in multiple ways: Vanity of vanities. Everything is meaningless. Absurdity. Empty, fleeting, like a breath of the wind.
These words of Ecclesiastes feel very relevant when we consider that Oxford’s 2025 phrase of the year is rage bait, which means “content deliberately designed to provoke outrage.” Too many of the words we are exposed to are worse than empty, and instead is content whose primary purpose is to fuel our anger. It is hard not to despair or to stop listening or even trying.
These words of Ecclesiastes are thus deeply honest and powerful in naming things as they are – that sometimes it feels like everything is meaningless, that our lives and our words are fleeting like a breath of wind.
The strong nature imagery in this text makes me think of climate change and how this is an obvious example of how fleeting everything is.
I name it especially because those of us who are older might not realize how much climate change is a source of despair for this next generation.
Many people in their twenties and even thirties, including in the church, wonder why one would ever bring children into this world when the environment is only getting worse. Adding to their sense of doom about the future is the challenge of having enough money to pay rent, buy food, and find a job that doesn’t drain all their energy.
And no matter how hard we try, even if things might be getting better for some of us some of the time, too often things feel like they’re getting worse for many. It is hard not to despair.
My focus thus far has been on young adults because this is the group that I work with – yet despair and questions are not limited only to their generation. Everyone’s life can take an unexpected turn: whether that is illness or the death of someone we care about, or whether that be a need to start over in a new place. Newcomers to Canada will especially understand the struggle to have enough to live on and find a job that uses your education and skills and pays enough to live on – and this is without naming the delays and challenges involved in attaining permanent residency here.
How long, O Lord? After naming how hard everything is, what then? What wisdom does the Bible have for us?
Society seems to celebrate despair or encourage a don’t care attitude of simply doing whatever you want! Even Ecclesiastes seems to suggest this. Ecclesiastes 8:15 actually says: ‘eat, drink, and be merry.’ Or else we read that everything is meaningless.
How does this relate to the rest of the Bible and the hope that we have in is Christ?
The answer – but wrong?
After concluding that ‘everything is meaningless,” Ecclesiastes 12 ends with Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all humankind. For God will bring every deed into judgment.
Fear God and keep God’s commandments are words that don’t entirely seem to fit with the rest of the text we read today. These words feel like the answer that a parent gives when they don’t want to give a more honest and complicated answer. Just believe what I say already.
Or it sounds like something said in a Bible study when the questions get too complicated and people are starting to get uncomfortable. And so someone wraps up the conversation with ‘well, God’s in charge, so everything must be okay, right?
But everything being okay is exactly the opposite of what the text has been saying. Everything is not okay. Everything is a mess.
When things are difficult and it is hard to hope that things will be better, it isn’t clear how fearing God and following God’s commands fit in. How does fearing God – and even God’s promised judgement named in 11:9 – provide hope for our everyday lives?
Grace in the text
What is beautiful and hopeful in the book of Ecclesiastes is how it gives us an example of what it looks like to be honest about reality as we experience it. And even if our experiences might be different, different from each other or different from the author of the book of Ecclesiastes, it can be comforting to hear others acknowledge how life is often hard and disappointing.
Ironically enough, we can sometimes ignore how ugly things are, as if we are trying to plug our noses against a smell. We can do our best to close our doors to the suffering of the world around us, and try to forget that the difficulties and smell around us includes and affects us. It doesn’t help that our efforts towards justice don’t seem to make the smell go away any.
Ecclesiastes provides the grace of reminding us that we do not have to ignore the smell. We are never going to succeed in being the nice people that we often pretend to be so that we fit into society. We are not only the lovely pictures that we sent in our Christmas cards or posted on Facebook and Instagram. And on our own, we are never going to be able to fix what is broken in the world, no matter how hard we try.
Instead, God is inviting us to stop pretending that everything is fine and that make and do things right. We do not need to enter this new year with false hope or burden ourselves with our efforts to become better people.
Instead, we can turn to God. We can invite God into the messiness of our lives and God will not turn away in disgust at our inevitable failures, but will meet us there in our frailties and even mistakes. In turning to God, we remember that God cares and will bring about justice.
God is inviting us to this even if we have loved God our whole lives and may feel we are getting old and feeble like the description in the text.
God is inviting us to this even if we are still learning about who this God of the Bible is, or even if we are new to the church.
We are invited to come to God in the honest difficulties of life and trust that God’s grace and love and justice is enough for ourselves and those around us. The Holy Spirit is present with us in the middle of all that we’ve gone through this past year and whatever this new year might bring, whatever that might look like.
The image of a cut being washed clean can be helpful for describing how God is present with us in the middle of all the messiness of life. When we get a significant cut or wound, we don’t ignore it. Instead, we wash it out as best we can and then we bandage it up. If it starts to smell because it’s been infected, we don’t pour perfume over it to make it smell better but instead we seek professional help.
When we wash a wound clean, it doesn’t make the wound better nor does it guarantee that we won’t get hurt again. Instead, the cleaning of the wound makes it possible to heal. In the same way God doesn’t take away the difficulties of life, even as God’s grace and forgiveness cleans us and washes away most of the stink. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get hurt again or that we won’t sin again nor does it give us superpowers. The cleansing creates space for us to trust in God’s power. Trust God is present and healing in the middle of the problems in ourselves and in the world.
God is present and healing us. God is working in and through the world today.
Grace through reading text through whole Bible
God’s presence does not pretend that everything is okay in our own lives or the world around us, but instead is the presence of God who became human. Jesus even experienced the indignity and messiness that is part of death.
God understands intimately the difficulties of life, and God is present with us in that. That is the hope of the text, and the hope that is found in the final words of the text.
Cal Seerveld who taught at ICS and was a member of my local church, expands on what that hope looks like in his book on Ecclesiastes: “Ecclesiastes, like the rest of the Bible, though it details the groaning of us creatures (Romans 8:18-39), is primarily about the great deeds of God. That’s why one should grasp the final words of the book, not as a dogmatic command, but as a thankful cheer: Stand in awe of God and keep God’s commandments!”
The commands of God are not one more thing that we need to do and inevitably fail at. Instead the commandments of God, things like studying the Bible, coming to church, loving our neighbour, working for justice, and praying – these are ways for us to open ourselves to the Spirit and pay attention to where God is coming in like a breath of fresh air.
And so the text concludes that Yes, everything is meaningless, and yes, God is present. Not only is God present, God is in control, caring about evil and sin and those who have been harmed, a God of justice who promises to restore and heal those who have been hurt.
In the middle of the challenges of life and the questions we have, Ecclesiastes gives us language to be honest about how hard and absurd life feels. It points us to our desperate need for God. And it reminds of how radical the hope we have in Christ really is. This hope is built on Christ’s coming to earth, to dwell among humans, to suffer, and ultimately to conquer death. This hope proclaims that the Spirit is present among us, working in the world today, like a breath of fresh air.
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The above sermon was preached by Brenda at CrossPoint CRC in Brampton in January 2026 (and an earlier version of it was preached to several other churches in the region of Toronto prior to that).
