Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 155 · June 4
Nothing New
“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
Perhaps you found out recently that the thing you have been carrying has a name. Other people have had it, further back than you would have guessed, and whole books have been written about it. Strangely, that discovery may have felt like a demotion, as if your trouble had shrunk and you had shrunk along with it.
Here is the verse people often hand to someone in your place, and it is worth more than the tired tone it is usually said in: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun." Just before it, the Preacher describes a world that runs in circles. The sun "hasteth to his place where he arose." The wind "whirleth about continually." "All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full."
He is honest about what that costs: "There is no remembrance of former things." In this book, being one of many is no compliment. Yet there is a mercy hidden in it that he does not stop to point out, and Paul does: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man." Whatever is on you has been carried before, by people whose names you will never learn, and many of them came through it. Paul goes on to say why: "God is faithful."
Notice also the limit the Preacher puts around his own words, and he repeats it again and again: "under the sun." He is reporting the view from inside the circle, and he says so. The last book of the Bible gives a sentence spoken from outside it, by the One who sits on the throne: "Behold, I make all things new." That sentence stands in the same Bible as Ecclesiastes, and it does not cancel what the Preacher saw.
So let this verse stop sounding like a sentence passed on you in court. That your trouble is ordinary can be a relief, if you will take it that way, because it means the road has been walked before. And there is one more word still to be spoken over you, by the One who was never under the sun in the first place.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 155 is Desire Satisfied (Psalm 145:16).