The Everyday Gift
August 11 — Ecclesiastes 3:9–11
That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all his toil — this is the gift of God. (Ecclesiastes 3:13)
If there is a passage in Ecclesiastes that most people are familiar with, it is the passage immediately preceding our reading today. In verses 1–8 of this chapter, we read how, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” (verse 1). Some of you are already singing, “To everything, turn, turn, turn”! But, the passage we are reading today is often overlooked when we turn to Ecclesiastes 3.
The first two verses (vv. 9–10) can come across as negative if taken out of context. Especially verse 10: I have seen the burden God has laid on men. What this actually refers to is one of the results of the fall of mankind. In Genesis 3:17–19 we read
17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’
“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat
your food until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken; for dust
you are and to dust you will return.”
The “burden” laid on us is one we have inherited from our forefather, Adam. It is Adam’s “gift” to us, if you will, not God’s.
But, note what Ecclesiastes 3:11a goes on to say: He (God) has made everything beautiful in its time. Even the “burden” of work can and has been made “beautiful” by God. While we can go through life oblivious of this or, for that matter, of any of God’s doings (as the writer of Ecclesiastes hints at in the latter half of verse 11), this passage reminds us that God continues to bless us in the mundane, everyday aspects of life.
How about you? Are you eating and drinking, and finding satisfaction in all your “toil”? This is the gift of God. Give thanks today for your job, your responsibilities, the work you must do. Even though you may not see it right now, they are God’s gifts and he will reveal that in His time.
