God as sole giver
How Ecclesiastes teaches us to enjoy life’s gifts
From rapture to rupture
This past week, my wife, Nicole, and I returned from a night away without our eight-year-old daughter. It’s been years since we scheduled adult-only time. We were childless for twenty-seven hours; it was bliss.
Whole conversations free from interruptions, a night of unbroken sleep, and moments of quiet we had almost forgotten existed. It was as if we had stepped into another reality, one filled with abundant rest, where our problems softened and, for a moment, almost disappeared.
Unfortunately, all the fun blinded us from the obvious; our bliss was only temporary. Our marriage grew deeper, and we benefited from the extra sleep, but our time on earth is not immune to calamity and chaos. To be clear, we don’t think our daughter is chaotic. What I mean is that real life is chaos. Disordered. That disorder is part of the texture of reality.
The moment we arrived home, chaos met us at the door. Our daughter had developed a bladder infection that invaded her kidneys. The days that followed were filled with high fevers, chills, a trip to the ER, and many tears. If you’ve ever had a UTI, you know how miserable it can be. To add to the chaos, we discovered water in the basement. I had a cavity to get filled. And my wife was under pressure to submit multiple seminary papers despite having neither the time nor the mental space. Within hours, we moved from rapture to rupture.
Chasing after wind
Have you ever felt like life has you in a chokehold? Like blessing is always just beyond your grasp? It’s as if all your plans and good intentions unravel faster than they came together. After a while, the stress builds, and your mind begins to short-circuit. If you’ve felt this way, you’re not alone. It means you’re human. Prone to what the Preacher in Ecclesiastes calls “a chasing after the wind” (1:14).
Who’s the Preacher I’m referring to? The Preacher is the Latin translation of the Hebrew word Koheleth. It’s not a proper name. It’s a job description. It means the leader or speaker of an assembly, a preacher. The book of Ecclesiastes records the Preacher’s quest for the meaning of life. A quest that takes a lifetime and culminates in frustration. The Preacher repeatedly calls his quest for meaning “a chasing after the wind” (1:17; 2:11; 4:6).
What does the Preacher mean by chasing the wind? The Preacher’s phrase “chasing after the wind” is repeatedly linked to the Hebrew word hevel. Hevel means mist, vapour, emptiness, or meaninglessness. I prefer the word ephemeral because it captures the fleeting nature of our attempts to find satisfaction apart from God.
Old Testament scholar Ellen F. Davis writes, “According to this view, hevel expresses the total disparity between what we plan for and what actually happens” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs). Sometimes, the things we work for are not the things we truly desire. And when we come to terms with that reality, we encounter life’s hevel.
Chasing after wind robs life of meaning. It prevents us from experiencing genuine satisfaction. Hevel is like riding a stationary bike in front of a screen playing nature scenes and winding mountain roads. You pedal as fast as you can. Your legs burn. Sweat pours. It seems like you’re travelling, but in reality, you haven’t moved an inch.
In this way, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes is concerned about the fragility of our lives and the things we value. Ecclesiastes is not a book that promotes carpe diem, nor does it favour nihilism. It doesn’t elevate hedonism or asceticism. It’s not that life is not worth living or experiencing. It assumes life is too short to live foolishly. Life is too transient to ignore God’s gifts. Its brevity demands wise living.
Gifts amongst the chaos
There’s a positive side to Ecclesiastes that Christians often fail to note. God is described as the sole giver. For the Preacher, God creates everything, enabling every form of enjoyment. He becomes the ultimate gift-giver. God is pleased to give to his children. As the Preacher examines the world, he finds joy in these God-given gifts.
In Ecclesiastes, the repeated use of the Hebrew verb for “gift” shows this. It occurs twenty-eight times across twelve chapters. Often, this verb is associated with God, describing him as the singular giver. For instance, “God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy” (2:26); “he has put [given] eternity into man’s heart” (3:11); “God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them” (5:19; emphasis added to all).
What should we conclude from these verses? Again, Davis reminds us, “What Kohelet [the Preacher] aims to instill in his students is the ability to receive the pleasure of life as the gift they are and to recognize God as sole Giver” (Getting Involved with God). Genuine religion is about embracing God’s simple gifts and the joy they bring to our lives, even in the midst of a chaotic world.
So, what are these godly gifts? The Preacher describes them in three ways: bodily enjoyment, relationship, and work.
Bodily enjoyment as a gift
Let’s listen to the Preacher’s wisdom for a moment: “That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God” (3:13); “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God” (2:24); “So I commend the enjoyment of life, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun” (8:15).
Bodily enjoyment means accepting pleasure in life’s ordinary gifts. Eating, drinking, and sleeping—these small pleasures are a relief from life’s toil. God wants us to enjoy these gifts as we make our way through the world. In the Preacher’s eyes, denying these pleasures would be tragic, a rejection of God’s goodness.
A 50-minute drive from where I live is the English Garden, situated in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It’s bursting with flowers, twirling paths, metal sculptures, and free-form beds. Their website calls it “a feast for the senses.” I’m overpowered by the beauty every time I visit. The colours, smells, and sounds fill me with joy. Momentarily, the world’s madness dissolves, and I’m filled with delight.
At the same time, everything in the English Garden is dying. Its beauty and brilliance are fleeting. Soon, the flowers and plants will wither and return to the soil. In much the same way, we, too, are moving toward death. Yet death is part of what makes life extraordinary. It reminds us to live fully and to receive the small pleasures God gives, because one day death will steal them from our grasp.
Finding joy in the chaos of the world doesn’t have to be escapism. We’re not trying to distract ourselves from real life, nor are we attempting to avoid pain, stress, or responsibility. Rather, when we recognize these gifts as coming from God and meant to be enjoyed, they become meaningful.
Relationship as a gift
Let’s return to the Preacher’s words: “Enjoy life with your wife, whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun—all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toilsome labor under the sun” (9:9).
On the surface, this could seem like cynicism, as if marriage were nothing more than a prison where you must somehow learn to enjoy your sentence. When we look deeper, the words “whom you love” jump out. This “wife” is someone you genuinely love and cherish, not someone you must endure. It underlines how relationships can be a gift from God, like a shelter in a storm, as chaos takes root in the world.
The Preacher is not declaring that only married individuals enjoy life, nor is he favouring marriage over singleness. He’s simply naming marriage as one of life’s gifts. A spouse is a particular blessing in a hostile world—someone to cherish and enjoy amid life’s mess.
This idea becomes painfully clear when we look at what the Preacher says previously in Ecclesiastes 7:28: “My soul has sought repeatedly, but I have not found. One man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I have not found” (ESV). This is one of the most self-revealing passages in Ecclesiastes. It reads like a moment of reflection, even confession, as the Preacher looks back on his life and names his regrets and disappointments.
The autobiographical statement suggests that, in his pursuit of wisdom, the Preacher either remained single or failed to find a wise spouse. That doesn’t mean we should stop looking for wisdom. The point is the Preacher’s honest disappointment helps us see a critical idea: relationships are gifts to be enjoyed when received under God’s sovereign hand.
Work as a gift
One last time, let’s return to the text: “So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?” (3:22). Before this declaration, the Preacher, in v. 16, shares an observation. He sees “something else under the sun”: the righteous and the wicked share the same fate. They are equally subject to death; both will return to the dust.
What kind of world did God create where the righteous and the wicked receive the same death? It means all creatures stand on equal ground before YHWH (the name of God often rendered “the Lord” in English Bibles). Not one creature reigns supreme over the other. Everything exists in a reality that God can judge solely. He alone discerns the hearts and intentions of humankind. This is what the Preacher means in the following verse when he says, “God will bring into judgment both the righteous and the wicked” (3:17).
This vision also reshapes how we understand work. It means that in a world where God is the ultimate Judge, where all creatures stand before him, and where everyone marches toward the same fate, work becomes a gift that facilitates knowledge, skill, and wisdom. Again, Davis helps us by writing, “Good work enables us both to grow and to contribute something of genuine value to the world, and thus it tends to curb the temptation to injustice” (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Songs). Work helps us know our value and limitations by connecting us to the world in functional ways.
Injustice arises when we believe the world owes us something and, to obtain it, we exploit and abuse others. Good work enhances our understanding of how much God has provided. It reveals our God-given abilities and the privilege of using them in God’s service. When work is understood as a means of knowing God and the world he created, it is a gift.
The Preacher teaches us to receive life’s gifts and to recognize God as the sole giver. But how does this take shape in daily life? Part of the answer is for you to discern. As you do, remember that God is never caught off guard by the world’s calamity. We may at times ask why God allows chaos to overrun our lives, but we cannot go so far as to suggest that God does not care. God knows this world better than we do, which is why, in the great scope of life, he provides good gifts to his children.
Ultimately, God enables every form of enjoyment. As lifelong students of YHWH, we are learning to receive these gifts for what they are, within their proper limits. This is the way of wisdom. Apart from him, we are left asking, “Who can have enjoyment?” (2:25 ESV). But with him, even ordinary gifts become signs of grace.
Audio is generated with AI voice technology.
Photo credit: Lightstock
