Life is Unfathomable. Therefore Choose Life.

Water to Wine; Chrysenthenum Tea to Champagne?

Some days, you're just toodle-ing along, humming to yourself, comfy and satisfied with life etc, then a door appears as you trot by. You slow down, to hear the also-recently-apparated door-keeper say,"Come in, come through here". You peer gingerly through the doorway and a path of hitherto unthought-of possibilities yawns before you; a road of the undreamed and uncertain. You will leave friends and companions behind if you choose to go this way. The only thing you know is that it ostensibly concludes at your original destination.

Then, you are thankful for the Word in season, as it is in all seasons.

Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.

In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good. (Ecclesiastes 11:1-6)

Thankful that you can live by faith, knowing that you are a creature completely dependent on your Creator; knowing that your Creator controls all things even the hairs on your head; knowing that such a powerful person cares for you, working everything for your good, and so knowing, can take risks and not be paralysed by the unknown. (And frankly, all outcomes are ultimately unknown.)

Ricotta Tart

Thankful that you call as Father the one who gave you good things, that you may not worship the good things themselves for you know that only your Father sees and dictates the future, not your genes, your IQ and EQ, your family and friends, your exam grades, nor your CV (Isaiah 45:1-48:22; Charlie Skrine - The Lord of Time).

Light is sweet, and it is pleasant for the eyes to see the sun.

So if a person lives many years, let him rejoice in them all; but let him remember that the days of darkness will be many. All that comes is vanity.

Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, and let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth. Walk in the ways of your heart and the sight of your eyes. But know that for all these things God will bring you into judgment.

Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity.

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, "I have no pleasure in them"; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain, in the day when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men are bent, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those who look through the windows are dimmed, and the doors on the street are shut — when the sound of the grinding is low, and one rises up at the sound of a bird, and all the daughters of song are brought low — they are afraid also of what is high, and terrors are in the way; the almond tree blossoms, the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails, because man is going to his eternal home, and the mourners go about the streets — before the silver cord is snapped, or the golden bowl is broken, or the pitcher is shattered at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, and the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit returns to God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 11:7-12:8)

Thankful that you can drink life to the lees and wring maximum enjoyment from God's fantastic creation, knowing that the days will come when you will no longer find any pleasure in them.

Aubergine cheesecake

Besides being wise, the Preacher also taught the people knowledge, weighing and studying and arranging many proverbs with great care. The Preacher sought to find words of delight, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.

The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are given by one Shepherd. My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil. (Ecclesiastes 12:9-14)

Thankful that there is some order in the world so that there is a wise and a foolish way to live, but knowing the reality that bad things will happen even to the wise man, that life will sometimes be unfathomable, that all achievement will end with death, that our existence and the things we do are a vanity.

Thankful that God has frustrated our attempts to understand everything, so that we do not think that we ourselves are god, that we will fear him. Thankful that the ultimate wisdom is that, in knowing this, we do not waste our lives in futile and arrogant thought and research, attempting to solve the unsolvable. Rather, we can spend our energies doing what he created us to do - fear him and keep his commandments, for one day he will ask us to give an accounting for what we did while still alive.

In other words, thankful for the opportunity to choose life (Deuteronomy 30; Andrew Ong - The choice is yours - Make the right choice and choose the good life).

Life is Far Worse than an iPhone Game, Therefore Harvest the Day! (Ecclesiastes 3:16-5:7)

There is nothing more to life than there is to Zombie Farm (like Farmville but with zombies), the Qoholet might as well have said. You plow the ground and plant crops and zombies. It rains. Sometimes the zombies are duds even though your lifeforce is at 100%. The zombie contingent battles Old McDonnell for brains.

But at the end of the day, all that crop and clock-watching, life being put on hold, strategising and playing comes to nothing when Zombie Farm (or Farmville, Mafia Wars, Cafe World or your choice of virtual world toil) is deleted. Just like real life - no work lasts forever, there is nothing to show for all the time, battery life and energy (and relationships!) expended; it does not matter if you have slogged with wisdom and savviness or have just foolishly and randomly, after you die/are deleted there will be no memory of you or your deeds in the world. (Ecclesiastes 1-2)

The Teacher/Preacher/Gatherer observed that God's work, instead, endures forever and is perfect. And man's desire that there should be something more than an iphone game life and yet his inability to grasp it comes from God. But rather than be bitter about this, we should approach God with rightful fear and reverence, for it is God who is sovereign in the world and ordains and controls what happens, not us. Rather we should humbly enjoy the gifts that God has given us - the goodness of eating, drinking and finding satisfaction in work (Ecclesiastes 3:1-15)

Yotam Ottolenghi's shakshuka recipe

If the hebel (vanity/vapour) of the Qoholet's observations so far has been the ephemerality of life and work, he now observes the wretchedness of even attempting to enjoy the simple gifts of eating, drinking and finding satisfaction in work (Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:16):

It is a fact of life that some policemen and judges, who are meant to bring criminals to justice, may themselves be corrupt; that the very people who were meant to teach children right and wrong themselves sexually abuse them (Ecclesiastes 3:16). So NGOs, human rights organisations and their brethren are ultimately unrealistically idealistic, for band-aid cannot stop the gush of evil and wickedness in the world. And even if no one is intentionally unjust, the law itself is a sledgehammer that depends heavily on the discretion of the person enforcing it. So some parents who have tragically lost their children through their own accidental absentmindedness have had to suffer excruciating trials on charges of manslaughter or even murder. And if the comments on online articles about such deaths are representative of the general public, there is little sympathy (and in fact, hateful vitriol) for the grieving parents.

This sort of reaction, says one of the interviewees in Gene Weingarten's Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?, is because

Humans have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

They were responding in fear that they were nothing more than beasts (cf Ecclesiastes 3:18-21) - perhaps just dogs left out in the midday sun for, oops, far too long and then tossed into the rubbish. From what anyone can see, the only thing different is the law against the undignified treatment of human bodies.

Then there are some people who have suffered so much in life at the hands of others, whose lives are so tragic that they would have been better off dead. No, wait, better than death would be never having been born at all. Their oppressors are powerful and influential and there is no one to help them. (Ecclesiastes 4:1-3)

If you were someone whose entire existence was soaked with pain and all you can taste is the bitterness of injustice, you would have difficulty enjoying your food or drink.

And what of work? Man's toil and skill come not from the enjoyment of work itself but his envy of his neighbour, always anxiously striving to be better than them and to keep up with the Joneses/Tans. (Ecclesiastes 4:4). A fool who does no work starves but workaholism is also foolish (Ecclesiastes 4:5). It is pointless for one person to toil so hard all by his lonesome self if he has no one with whom to share the fruits (Ecclesiastes 4:6).

While it is wiser to work alongside another, to have a buddy in times of emergency or trouble and a warm body in the cold night; wiser to know contentment with a handful, such wisdom is in the end futile A poor boy, who through his wisdom becomes king over a countless number of people, will one day no longer know how to take advice and his former wisdom will be of no consequence to anyone (Ecclesiastes 4:9-16), just as perhaps, the younger generation does not remember the reported wisdom of Queen Elizabeth II of the UK or her concern for the welfare of her people but thinks of her as yet another self-serving celebrity who has outlived her entertainment value. It would have made no difference to them if she had been a merrymaking fool instead.

Yotam Ottolenghi's Roasted Vegetable Tart recipe
- attacked by spoons before we could get the knives out, spilling its sauteed onion guts

In view of all this, how can anyone enjoy food and drink and the work of his hands? What good is it to choose to work and act wisely while one still has to ability to do so? God has allowed injustices and unhappiness to occur so that man will see that organically, he is but dust to whom the concept of fairness ought not apply (Ecclesiastes 3:18-21). Man rages against this observation because God has put eternity in his heart, so that man suspects that he is more than moral-less molecules.

With a relationship with God comes the knowledge that there will come a day that God will judge the righteous and the wicked (Ecclesiastes 3:17). Therefore man can rejoice and (sic) fear God knowing that justice will prevail in the end and all (including himself) will be called to account for every act and word (Ecclesisates 5:1-7) and meanwhile, carpe diem (harvest the day)!


*If this reading appears a bit forced, perhaps it is part of the irony of attempting to find meaning and order in Ecclesiastes when there seems prima facie to be none, knowing that it must have some purpose however unfathomable!


Ecclesiastes
Easter Everyday
Quest for Immortality: EPIC FAIL (Ecclesiastes 1:1-15)
Life is Vapour, Therefore Enjoy Life (Ecclesiastes 2:1-3:15)
Life is Far Worse than an iPhone Game, Therefore Harvest the Day! (Ecclesiastes 3:16-5:7)
Rawa Island and Godly Contentment (Ecclesiastes 5:8 - 6:9)
Fallen Frangipani, Really Wise Living (Ecclesiastes 6:10-7:29)