Read
It Pays To Work Hard
1Be generous, and someday
you will be rewarded.
2Share what you have
with seven or eight others,
because you never know
when disaster may strike.
3Rain clouds always bring rain;
trees always stay
wherever they fall.
4If you worry about the weather
and don't plant seeds,
you won't harvest a crop.
5No one can explain how a baby breathes before it is born. So how can anyone explain what God does? After all, God created everything.
6Plant your seeds early in the morning and keep working in the field until dark. Who knows? Your work might pay off, and your seeds might produce.
Youth and Old Age
7Nothing on earth is more beautiful than the morning sun. 8Even if you have a very long life, you should try to enjoy each day, because darkness will come and will last a long time. Nothing makes sense.
9Be cheerful and enjoy life while you are young! Do what you want and find pleasure in what you see. But don't forget that God will judge you for everything you do.
10Rid yourself of all worry and pain, because the wonderful moments of youth quickly disappear.
Reflect
In his novel Perelandra, C.S. Lewis reimagines Adam and Eve’s temptation playing out on an alien world. It is a world in which the first man and woman live on floating islands that drift, uncontrolled, in a planet-wide sea. Instead of a tree from which they must not eat, God has forbidden them to sleep for the night on the few pieces of fixed, terrestrial land.
They lead an idyllic existence, going where the waves and ocean currents take the beautiful and bountiful islands on which they live. The islands are a paradise, but their uncontrollable and transitory nature makes it impossible for their inhabitants to grow their own food or build permanent structures. The man and the woman lead a blissful existence, but one entirely dependent on God. The fixed land offers the temptation of a future that can be known and planned for, but in a barren place full of hardship and death.
In Perelandra, what has been forbidden is to take one’s fate into one’s own hands. To live on the fixed land is to control one’s destiny, but it will be a small and bleak one, cut off from the rich and blessed life God intended. Peaceful abundance is traded for control.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher repeatedly makes the point that while we believe that we are in charge of our own lives, we are sadly mistaken. We struggle for scraps when we were meant to be fed by the hand of God. We trust our own wisdom and strength to keep us, rather than the God who made us and for whom our keeping is delight. We were not meant to carve our own meagre living out of this world, but to be led by our creator into the ever-increasing wonders of the life he made us for.
Respond
Dear God, Speak to us your true word in a world that says that we must pay any cost to survive. Teach us to trust in you for our keeping and our calling. Help us to give up our lives to you, and in turn receive our true lives that are only found in you.
Mike Bonikowsky
Mike Bonikowsky began looking at books as soon as he could sit up. Eventually he learned to read them, and has not been able to stop. One day he realized that people wrote the words in the books, and he began to write his own. He has not been able to stop that either. He lives with his wife and child in Melancthon Township, Ontario, where he writes his words in the basement.