In Ecclesiastes 3 God calls us to slow down and think about the life we live in this world. In the beginning God made us to live with Him eternally, never having to wonder or worry about what comes next. So what happens when we find ourselves outside the walls of Eden, amid a world of change, uncertainty, doubt, and death? To be sure, ours is a world of balance: of being born and of dying. While we live we may eat, drink, and rejoice in our day. But what then? What comes after this life, and how does that day affect the life we live here and now? We need to know before it’s too late … Who will come to us and show us what’s next?

The more you seek pleasure, the more of it you have to have to feel satisfied. This "Pleasure Paradox" will not lead you to satisfaction, but rather to slavery. But this pleasure seeking is the worldly wisdom referred to in Ecclesiastes 2. Godly wisdom shows us that we will only be satisfied when we submit our desires to God instead of trying to satisfy them ourselves.

In Ecclesiastes, the author is searching for the meaning of life. The book takes us on a journey through the author's search for meaning and all the things he tried and all the places he looked to satisfy the deepest longings of his existence. It opens with his great question: "For what does a man gain for all his toil under the sun?"

There is an unavoidable despair you can feel as you read it, but that's good. You're actually supposed to feel that way, that's why the Lord gave us this book. Because Ecclesiastes is part of the wisdom literature of the Bible, and true wisdom begins when our hope in the things of this world ends. 

That's a hard lesson to learn, but Ecclesiastes is a wake up call to not have to learn that lesson the hard way. 

While the author invites into the depths of life's heaviness and hopelessness, Christ meets us in those depths. In each chapter, Ecclesiastes will help us see Jesus in a new light and come to him in a new way. For while there is nothing new under the sun, the incarnation is God introducing something new. Meaning itself took on flesh and blood, and it's in him the search comes to an end.