The Wisdom of a Threefold Strand - Ecclesiastes 3:16-4:16

In seasons of severe suffering, we experience life at the extremities. We have mountaintop moments where we see farther and more clearly than ever before. We have days where we can say with full conviction, “God has made everything is beautiful in its time. I have eternity in my heart. I know God is sovereignly accomplishing his purposes. I can rest in Him.”And then there are deep valley moments where we are in the depth of despair, where nothing makes sense and everything is dark. As we turn to the second half of chapter 3, the Preacher enters the valley of despair once again. He’s looking at life horizontally, from the perspective of one “under the sun.” This is repeated five times.Over and over again, he writes “I saw” (6x) or “I said in my heart” (2x). He looks horizontally at the harsh realities of evil, injustice, and death, and then the mad foolishness of the human treadmill, and finds more reasons to say that everything is meaningless (5x). In his reflections, he oscillates between the extremities of deep faith conviction and very unsettling questions.How do you move forward when you don’t understand why God has made life this way?The Harsh Realities of Evil, Injustice, and Death (3.16-4.3)The Mad Foolishness of the Treadmill (4:4-8, 4:13-16).The Wisdom of Bonded Relationship (4:9-12)