Archive for category: GAMEtime Sharing

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 5:1-7.  In case you’re wondering, since I believe that Qohelet, known as the “Teacher” and the main speaker in Ecclesiastes, is best identified as King Solomon, I will refer to him interchangeably as Qohelet or Solomon. 

Ecclesiastes 5:1-3 (NIV)
1  Guard your steps when you go to the house of God. Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.
2  Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God. God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.
3  As a dream comes when there are many cares, so the speech of a fool when there are many words.
 
On verses 1-3:  Here Qohelet gives some advice on how to worship God in church: “go near to listen” (v1) and “do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God” (v2); rather, “let your words be few”.  Does this mean that the quieter you are in church, the more spiritual you are?  No, Qohelet’s talking about the attitude of your heart.  When you go to worship God, go with a humble heart that’s eager to listen and learn, rather than to boast about yourself or make promises you can’t keep. 

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 3:14-22.  In case you’re wondering, since I believe that Qohelet, known as the “Teacher” and the main speaker in Ecclesiastes, is best identified as Solomon, I will refer to him interchangeably as Qohelet or Solomon.

Ecclesiastes 3:14-15 (NIV)
14  I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
15  Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account.

On verses 14-15:  These two verses carry with them the same kind of peace, profundity and depth that verses 1 to 13 carry.  In particular verse 14 speaks of the sovereignty of God, how whatever God does endures and you can’t change it.  Verse 15 speaks of how from God’s perspective, since God stands outside of time and space, to God everything is already done.

The last part of verse 15 – “God will call the past to account” – is the toughest to understand.  Does it mean, as some scholars suggest, that God tends to repeat the past, or that God looks to make right what has happened is in the past, or something else?  It’s not entirely clear, though right now I tend to favour the second option.

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 2:12-16.  In case you’re wondering, since I believe that Qohelet, the main speaker in Ecclesiastes, is best identified as Solomon, I will refer to him interchangeably as Qohelet or Solomon.  Let’s go!

Ecclesiastes 2:12-16 (NIV)
12  Then I turned my thoughts to consider wisdom, and also madness and folly. What more can the king’s successor do than what has already been done?
13  I saw that wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.
14  The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness; but I came to realize that the same fate overtakes them both.
15  Then I thought in my heart, “The fate of the fool will overtake me also. What then do I gain by being wise?” I said in my heart, “This too is meaningless.”
16  For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!
 
On verses 12-16:  In the book of Proverbs, a younger Solomon was so sure that wisdom was supreme and worth chasing after, even if it cost everything a person have.  As verses 13-14 say, Solomon saw that “wisdom is better than folly, just as light is better than darkness.  The wise man has eyes in his head, while the fool walks in the darkness”.  Yet here an older Solomon is now struck by the realization that both the wise and the foolish die just the same, “the same fate overtakes them both” (v14).  Both will be forgotten one day (v16).  So why bother being wise, older Solomon wonders? (v15)   

Hi GAMErs!

Today’s passage is Ecclesiastes 2:1-11.  In case you’re wondering, since I believe that Qohelet, the main speaker  in Ecclesiastes, is best identified as Solomon, I will refer to him interchangeably as Qohelet or Solomon.  Let’s go!

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 (NIV)
1  I thought in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.” But that also proved to be meaningless.
2  “Laughter,” I said, “is foolish. And what does pleasure accomplish?”
3  I tried cheering myself with wine, and embracing folly–my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was worthwhile for men to do under heaven during the few days of their lives.

On verses 1-11:  After focusing so much on gaining and studying wisdom and coming up empty (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18), Solomon shifts his focus to amassing wealth and pursuing pleasure.  Solomon claims that his goal was “to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during the few days of their lives.” (v3)  Pastor-author Douglas Sean O’Donnell puts it this way: in Ecclesiastes 2:1-11 Solomon searches for satisfaction in 4 places: the pub, the garden, the treasury, and the bedroom.

Hi GAMErs!

Today we begin the book of Ecclesiastes, often considered one of the most puzzling books in the Bible.  The book of Ecclesiastes is about a person known only as “Qohelet”, a Hebrew word often translated into English as the “Teacher” or the “Preacher”, or “Ecclesiastes” in Greek.  Qohelet looks back on his life and draws a number of conclusions based on his life experiences.  Traditionally Qohelet has been identified with King Solomon for many reasons: he is described as a “son of David” (1:1), was “king over Israel in Jerusalem” (1:12), had more wisdom than anyone who ruled in Jerusalem before him (1:16), undertook huge projects (2:4-6), amassed incredible wealth (2:7-8a), owned a harem (2:8), imparted knowledge to the people (12:9), searched out and arranged many proverbs (12:9) and came up with many of his own wise sayings (12:10).   All that certainly sounds like Solomon, although his name is never mentioned explicitly in the book.   Some scholars question whether the author of Ecclesiastes was actually Solomon.  They instead argue that Ecclesiastes falls within a genre of ancient Near Eastern writing known as a fictional autobiography, where someone adopts the persona of a famous person (in this case, Solomon) in order to communicate their ideas.  Ecclesiastes reads like an old, jaded, disillusioned King Solomon in his later years, expressing what is left of his faith in God after he had married many foreign wives and worshiped many foreign gods.  Whether the writer of Ecclesiastes was actually Solomon or not, there is much we can learn from this book in the Bible.