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Finding Joy in Our Daily Toil: Ecclesiastes 5:18 Meditation
In today’s meditation, we explore contentment through the l… (visit YouTube for more)
Transcript
Yesterday’s meditation focused on contentment in hardships. Today, we’re coming at contentment from a different angle, which may be easier to swallow. This is Ecclesiastes, chapter 5, verse 18. Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot.
So the writer of Ecclesiastes understands that God has put us here with purpose and he’s given us work to do. This remains as true for us now as it did for Adam and Eve when he left them to tend the garden and to name the animals. We are here to do work for God that glorifies him and which we can enjoy.
This writer is saying it’s amazing, it’s good, it’s appropriate when someone is able to work, when someone is able to labour, and then to receive the fruits of that labour to be able to eat and drink, to find pleasure, actually to find pleasure in work.
And however amazing or modest the provisions are that we have that enable us to eat and drink, we can be thankful as we eat and drink to God that he’s sustaining us.
All that said, I think the writer of Ecclesiastes here is looking for something better than the mundane, is looking for that which feels to us to be a blessing. We mustn’t have unrealistic expectations of what we will get out of this life in a fallen world. Nevertheless, it is good and fitting for us to eat and drink and find enjoyment in our work. And if that’s not you right now, then let’s pray that God will bless you in this way.
Lord God, I ask for your blessing on my friends, so that they are able to labour in whatever way they need to labour in their lives and Lord, that this will be generously rewarded so that they are able to find pleasure and enjoyment in the work that you’ve given them to do. For their benefit and also for your glory and for the sake of the Gospel. Amen.
