Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain [fleeting] life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. (Eccl. 9:7-9, ESV)

The passage above is my favorite in this season of life. It reminds me to seize the day (“Go”), treasure my wife, expect to work hard (‘toil”), pursue joy and celebration (“merry heart”), and reject depression and religious man-made rules (e.g. don’t “drink your wine”). It’s also a great summary of Ecclesiastes and the culmination of the common refrain throughout the book (see 2:24, 3:22, 4:9-12, 5:18, 8:15, and 9:7-10a above).

The message is this: get on with life and don’t worry too much about the details which lie with God.

John Lennon is famous for saying, “Life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.” Given the message of Ecclesiastes, we might modify his statement slightly to: “Life’s what happens while you’re busy trying to control what you can’t control and comprehend what you can’t comprehend.”

“The Preacher” (12.9) tells us that joy is possible for those who seek it in the right place. It’s not found in the absence of God, living in illusions, not accepting our creaturely limitations, or in a preoccupation to control. It’s found in gratitude for and appreciation of God’s simple gifts like food, drink, community, love, and work.[1]

And then there’s the white garments to reflect the heat of the sun and the oil to protect and nourish the skin:

“When people were distraught, they wore sackcloth and ashes to show their grief; but white cloths… and oil… were worn to show joy and happiness…. [The idea is] to look after yourself. The world was meant to be a place of color and life and beauty.”[2]

The most magnificent thing about 9:7-9, however, is the deeper redemptive thread beyond the surface meaning. Look at the verses again. They’re filled with wedding imagery: food, drink, white garments, oil, a husband, and a wife. David Gibson notes that this is because “the Bible’s picture of the best that life can offer us is simply a foretaste of a wedding banquet still to come, the beauty and grandeur and glory of which cannot be put into words… Every meal is a foretaste, an appetizer, for the banquet to come.”[3]

Remember the key phrase in Ecclesiastes, vanity, which means breath or vapor? Well, right in the center of all that mist—the elusive, sorrowful, ephemeral, and obscure—is a feast! Jeffrey Meyer’s meditation on Ecclesiastes, A Table in the Mist, captures the idea perfectly.

Think of the greater significance of the table throughout Scripture: the coming great banquet of the kingdom of God in Luke 14, the institution of the Lord’s Supper described in 1 Cor. 11, and the marriage feast of the Lamb in Rev. 19. It’s evident that these themes inspired the 1967 painting, The Feast, above. Although I can’t find out much about the artist, Bud Meyer, these day, the gospel themes in his photographic sketch continue to fascinate me.

The three candles in the center remind us of the Triune God—the relational core at the center of all reality. They also remind us of His redemptive plan:

• God the Father loved us before the foundation of earth (Eph. 1:4) and gave His only begotten Son to save us.
• Jesus, God the Son, came to die for those the Father gave him (Jn. 17:9). And although He gave his life “a ransom for many,” the quality of His infinite sacrifice is sufficient to cover the sins of any who might come to Him (Jn. 6:37).
• At the right time, the Spirit comes to open our hearts (Acts 16:14b), bring what is dead to life (Eph. 2:1), draw us to Christ (Jn. 6:44), and apply Jesus’ blood to our need.

The candles are lit and there’s fire: a reminder that God is the author of all desire, motivation, and drive in life.

In His great love, He has set a table for us.  And not only us, but countless others—so much so that, like in the picture, we can’t see where the table ends.

As Rich Mullins, wrote in his song The Love of God:

There’s a wideness in God’s mercy

I cannot find in my own

And He keeps His fire burning

To melt this heart of stone

Keeps me aching with a yearning

Keeps me glad to have been caught

In the reckless raging fury

That they call the love of God

Finally, the painting, The Feast, comes with an invitation to enjoy the greatest of all banquets—abundant and eternal life that begins here and now. It also points to a time when the heavenly city will come down to earth and all tears will be washed away (Rev. 21-22).

Friend, the eternity God placed in your heart is not a lie. As you peer through this earthly mist that often seems more like a fog, there really is reason to celebrate. The God who created this universe, in His mercy, offers you a place at His table now and forever more. The table is a place of honor, intimacy, friendship, shared mission, and full acceptance.

“Come for all things are now ready.”

 

*Please click here to listen to a sermon preached on the themes above.

[1] I’m indebted to Ian Provan for his rich insights, some reflected in this paragraph, into the various themes of Ecclesiastes.

[2] David Gibson, Living Life Backward (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 113.

[3] Ibid., 116.