Day 153: March 19, 2026 – Ecclesiastes 7-12

He is consistent in giving advice that leads us to enjoy the current life that we have, because we have absolutely no guarantee about what the life to come will be like, our future. He is not referring to heaven, he is referring the future of our life, regardless of whether we are righteous or not, it does not mean that we will be given any special treatment in this life for how we act. This is a type of message that leads the author to say vanity of vanities, all is vanity. He has noticed that the righteous are treated as sinners, and sinners are treated with long life and prosperity, there is no making sense of it.

His solution is that we do that which we enjoy. As followers of Jesus Christ, I would say the same thing. The interesting caveat to all of this is that what we enjoy ought to be what Jesus would have us enjoy. There is no reason to pursue sin, because it should not be something that we either enjoy nor something that we think would give us a good future. When our will is perfectly aligned with the will of God, when our desire is perfectly aligned with God’s desire, then we are able to live our lives following the advice of the author of Ecclesiastes. Things become less vain when we pursue God’s desire in our lives, because it ought to reflect our desire and vice versa. This is lost on many people as they see following God an exercise in legalism. It is nothing like that at all. It is an exercise in freedom.