I still remember, as a young fellow of 19, reading Ecclesiastes for the first time and realizing Solomon was saying what I had been struggling with for over 3 years after my father’s death. I wrote “We are the slaves of life and we drag our shackles with us from day to day while life, like water, runs through our fingers. We stand in the valley between the snow-capped mountains of two eternities. ” I resonated with Solomon’s realization of reality when he confronted the absurdity of life and concluded that all is “vanity (meaninglessness NIV)” and a “striving after wind” 1:14 & 17 2:11 & 17 & 26. If life us viewed apart from God, it becomes an insoluble problem.

“ALL is vanity and vexation of spirit” exclude God from the world and scepticism and materialism must be the inevitable result. The chief design of the book of Ecclesiastes is to test things in order to prove how inadequate they are to satisfy the deepest and truest longings of the human heart. Its problem is: can the world, apart from God, meet our need. The conclusion, ” a chasing after wind” NIV. God bless whatever life blows your way today.