The Whole Matter

Would you take advice from someone who had tried nearly everything life offers and found most of it empty? That is who is speaking here, and knowing where he stands is half of hearing what he says. This line comes on the last page of Ecclesiastes. Before it come nearly twelve chapters of testing the world piece by piece: work, wisdom, money, pleasure, and the hard fact that the wise man dies just as the fool does. "The conclusion of the whole matter" arrives only after all of that has been weighed.

The closing paragraph even lets you watch the book being finished: "because the preacher was wise, he still taught the people knowledge; yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs." Someone sat with all this material and put it in order. Then he adds a line that every tired student will understand: "of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." The man who is about to tell you to fear God has just told you that reading more books will not save you either.

That is why his last sentence carries real weight: "Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man." It is what was left standing when everything else had been picked up and found too light. The next verse gives the reason it holds: "For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing." So here is a plain question to carry: will you start your life with this sentence, or only come to it after a hard year? Either way it is solid ground, because the God who sees every secret thing is the same God who gives you His commandments as a path to walk in.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 191 is God Who Pardons (Micah 7:18).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two