What Am I Reading?

Futility. It’s almost a law of human endeavour. The falling snow erases the shovelled path behind us. The miles erode away the car we’re still struggling to pay for. The bodies we sweat and bleed and weep to maintain grow old and fail nonetheless. No matter how well we did our job, no matter how much we had saved for retirement, in the end, all our treasures are buried with the body they could not keep alive.

And so we are not surprised by the words that come ringing across the three thousand years between Solomon and ourselves. He hasn’t said anything here we didn’t already suspect in our secret hearts, in the middle of the night shift, exhausted and disappointed by adulthood. But we didn’t expect to find those hopeless words here.

Is this still the word of God? It is. But it is also the word of a regular person, worn thin and ragged by the old heartbreaking business of being human, as we all have been. So why is this in the Bible? It is here because it is a truth, and truth is what God loves. But it is not the whole truth.

The Bible is not a document drafted to convince us of its agenda, but the living, breathing Word of God, spoken to a handful of humans, who speak it in turn to us. So this Word comes to us as Christ came to us: God himself but also human, glory wrapped in the scarred and dirty skin of the only life we know, that we might understand and be transformed, and not obliterated, by it. The Bible tells us the truth about ourselves, and then it tells us the truth about God: The worst news, and then the absolute best.

Respond in Prayer

Lord, you are the author of the world and the stories that take place in it, and only in you do our lives have meaning. Be the author of this day and lead me to the purpose you have promised those who follow you. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Michael Bonikowsky