Joy at the End of the Tether: The Inscrutable Wisdom of Ecclesiastes

by Douglas Wilson

The great Hebrew philosopher who wrote this book called Ecclesiastes calls us to joy, but to a joy which thinks, a joy which does not shrink back from the hard questions. He calls us to meditation, but to a meditation which does not despair. And as he points out repeatedly, shutting off every avenue of escape, only believers can enjoy the vanity which surrounds us on every side.

But before we can learn joy at the end of the tether, we must learn the strength of that tether. The Lord is God and we are not.

A man works hard to make a pile and doesn’t stop to ask a very basic question—why am I doing this? He makes a stack of money but has no one to share it with. He can’t afford to marry or have children, because they would take him away from his work. He cannot afford to have friends because all their motives would be suspect. He could buy dinner for everyone in the restaurant, but no one wants to sit with him. That’s all right, because he doesn’t want to sit with them either.

Ditch diggers, Solomon tells us, sleep better than the anxiety-ridden rich

We want to evaluate everything that parades by us simply, and say that material blessings are always a blessing and that adversity is always a curse.

we understand the point here, we metaphorically see a man without any taste buds who can afford the finest of restaurants. The finest chef in the world can only fix him gray, cold oatmeal. We may see an impotent man married to a beautiful woman. The wise would do well to guard their hearts and to refuse to envy a bed where nothing happens. The people most often envied are frequently the most miserable people on the face of the earth.

The good Lord gives to His people a can opener to go with the cans of peaches He gives them.

If given a choice between hearing a wise man enumerate your faults and hearing the Spice Girls trying to sing something, the choice is an easy one.

Sometimes the good old days were not really that good. And even when they were, we must not revolt against God’s wisdom in His providence. He is the one who decreed that those days would come to an end.

against God will either raise the fist in civil unrest and revolution or raise the phallus in their contemptuous fornications.8

The religiously self-righteous are, to use the great words of John Randolph, like a dead mackerel on the beach in the moonlight. They simultaneously “shine and stink.”

When a wicked man dies, his hope perishes.

Some are overwhelmed by nothing. We see here some more understatement. That boy could get lost on an escalator.