Thoughts on Ecclesiastes:

"3: 9. What gain has the worker from his toil?
10: I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with.
11: He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
12: I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;
13: also that it is God's gift to man that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil.
14: I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has made it so, in order that men should fear before him."

I used to read this passage with great confusion.Verse 12 does not seem like what you expect to find in the Bible. And hasn't the Teacher just stated that pursuing pleasure is folly?

And then today I realized something: the Teacher is right. Because pursuing pleasure does not bring happiness, nor, in the end, even pleasure. What does make men happy? Walking with God, doing justice, making an honest living, and loving those around them. Man is not happy without God. Man is not happy without work.

There really is a time for everything. A time to work, and a time to rest. A time for fasting, and a time for feasting. We go from one to the other, spring turning to summer, then to fall, and winter, and then back again. Advent becoming Epiphany, then moving to Lent, Easter, Pentecost, and back again. We laugh, cry, rejoice, sigh, rage, and fear. And it is good. Human life, in its smallness and ordinariness, is good. It can be holy, if we so wish. It is mundane, of the earth, and like the earth, it is immense and grand as the ocean, and as small and humble as a grain of sand.

And it's ok that nothing makes sense, or really holds together. Nothing we do or see ever will. And that's alright. That's the way things are (though not how they were meant to be.) We can grieve for what was, what should have been, and give thanks that God did not leave us to it, and that His works are eternal, and He will preserve what is to be perserved.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord.