This is a very well-known passage, not least because of the hit song, written by Pete Seeger and sung by The Byrds. The lyrics match the first 8 verses of this scripture almost, verbatim. We don’t know who the author of this book was, but the overarching teaching that is apparent is that life is meaningless without God. We can be sure that at the beginning of time God created us in His image and He knows our time of birth and our time of death long before we or anyone else can hazard to guess. All the other things of life, which are broadly listed in this chapter are subject to our free will, we can and do influence the detail and circumstances of everything else by one means or another.

Verse 10 particularly struck me where it talks about eternity.  ‘He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end’.  Science can always offer us a worldly view or definition of eternity. I prefer my bible’s definition, which says “In scripture eternity is not an abstraction but limitless time, over which God is totally sovereign. God alone possesses lasting time, in contrast to the fleeting time of the human race”. To paraphrase this it means that only God has everlasting time which we can hardly fathom, save to say that God lives outside of time as we know it and we describe it as eternity when we think or talk of being with God in glory.

The last section of our reading describes how we are just like all the creatures of the earth in that we come from and return to, dust. The crucial difference is however, when we return to dust our souls return to God. Personally, I choose to believe that there will be animals in eternity but I also believe it is only the souls of human beings that return to their creator God. In any event we cannot know what is not yet happened and once we are returned to Him who created us we will not want or need to know. Science can and no doubt will strive to find answers for everything and endeavour to know everything, but it is my humble opinion that only God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit can and do know everything.

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Question:  Do you struggle to understand the so called big questions in life or are you content with the knowledge and skills you do have?  Are you using your skills and gifts to benefit others?  You may want to do a brief personal reflection to these questions.

Prayer:  Dear Lord. Please will you open my eyes to see the beauty of the world around me and to add to that beauty using the gifts you have given to me. I want to always see your image reflected in the things I do and say but I always need your help to succeed in that. Amen.