MEANINGLESS ANXIETY?

What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless. —Ecclesiastes 2:22, 23

Ecclesiastes is a difficult book. It is complicated, complex, and, at times, seemingly contradictory—somewhat like the lives we live. It is worth asking how it fits in the Bible. While much of the Bible urges that our lives are meaningful in many different ways, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes seems to insist, over and over again, that everything is meaningless.

Of course, understood in the correct sense, what the Preacher says is true. One of our greatest fears is that nothing actually matters. Particularly in light of death, does all our work and worry amount to nothing? Amid the stress of our busy lives, there is a lurking sense that much of what we do contributes little to any greater good and is unlikely to last any longer than our attention to it. But we must do many of these things nonetheless.

Even our anxieties, worries, and fears—the things that keep us awake at night—are considered suspect by the Preacher. If our pleasures and joys are fleeting, so too are our griefs and sorrows. Those things that we spend so much time preoccupied with or even necessarily and legitimately attending to can seem as ephemeral as the lives we devote to them. Ecclesiastes is a contemplation of priorities, not nihilism.

Those things that we spend so much of our time and energy trying to overcome or working toward will come to an end. But a life lived with God does matter, even if we might not always understand exactly how. “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).