Ecclesiastes 4 reminds me of a fork in the road of my own life. My father was a loner that never seemed to have any close relationships with anyone. I remember sitting at a bar at 26 years old, and seeing my reflection in the mirror. I saw myself in the middle of a crowd and realized I was completely alone emotionally. I knew I had to make a change, or I too would likely remain isolated. This chapter seems to be written by an old Solomon looking back, remembering the best, and then looking around now and seeing the worst. Perhaps he is thinking of a wrong turn. He begins, “I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place… tears of the oppressed and they have no comforter… I declared that the dead… are happier than the living… better… is the one who has never been born“. We have a sense that he had run hard in the rat-race, perhaps pushing aside all obstacles including people, “All toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another“. He has distain for the lazy, “Fools fold their hands“. And he ridicules their rationale, “Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil“. Pausing to look around, he adds, “There was a man all alone… his eyes were not content with his wealth… For whom am I toiling? …This too is meaningless a miserable business!“. Maybe Solomon is holding up a mirror for you?
The next section holds great meaning to me because one year after the turning point of my life, my pastor read these words in my wedding ceremony. I immediately think of the joy of that day. I believe Solomon is remembering an earlier time in his life. He begins, “Two are better than one“. He continues by listing all the reasons, “If either of them falls down, one can help the other up… if two lie down together, they will keep warm… Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves“. Solomon then adds the ingredient that makes it possible for two imperfect people to become unified. He says, “A cord of three strands is not quickly broken“. Who is the third strand? I believe he is referring to the Holy Spirit of God knitting together two into one. With God at the center of my marriage and my home, I am wonderfully drawn into unity. The string of our marriage becomes part of the tapestry of God’s family. Are you feeling a need for unity? There is hope.
I believe Solomon looks into a mirror of his own and he concludes, “Better a poor but wise youth than an old but foolish king who no longer knows how to heed a warning“. Is Solomon facing a decision point? He continues, “I saw that all who lived and walked under the sun followed the youth, the king’s successor“. I wonder if he is thinking back on his father King David and the legacy he would leave for his own son as he wrote, “The youth may have come from prison to the kingship, or he may have been born in poverty within his kingdom… But those who came later were not pleased with the successor“. Solomon had strayed and wandered far from God’s will and I believe he was now miserable and ready to submit to God’s authority. I believe my life is just one example of God’s ability to transform us into a reflection of Him. Some of us need to be set free from our past by embracing the unity of God’s Holy Spirit today. “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord“. Are you ready to make a turn?.