![[Photo of a Scripture verse]](https://www.deankwilson.com/Blog_images/Ecclesiastes_9_7.jpg)
| “Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do.” |
| —Ecclesiastes 9:7 |
King Solomon, in imagining what life is like for those humans who do not have a relationship with God, concludes that only death awaits them. This, in turn, prompts him to offer advice to these ones without God, that is to say, the godless. Since death is all that awaits them, Solomon suggests they make the best they can of this life “under the sun” or here on earth.
Notice these words from Solomon, as recorded in Ecclesiastes 9:7-10:
Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do. Always be clothed in white, and always anoint your head with oil. 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. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.
Because to Solomon it seems as if these godless ones have not received God’s extended opportunity to form a relationship with Him, the King presumes that God has put his stamp of approval—or perhaps a better choice of words: hand of acceptance—on what they are doing. This is particularly true because Solomon seems to believe that death for them will be their complete end.
We, of course, know that their existence will not simply end at death. Rather, all those whom God has not reconciled to Himself will spend eternity in total separation from God. His image will no longer reside in them. His influence will no longer preserve them. They will be cutoff and utterly isolated from God.
We also know that those God has chosen will belong to Him forever. That security of His Presence intends to promote us toward works that will bring glory to Him and to His Kingdom. Our good works do not bring us our salvation. Salvation comes by God’s grace alone through faith alone. But, our good works do become an important component of our pathway toward holiness, or what is often called “sanctification.”
It seems as if the light is beginning to dawn within the heart and mind of Solomon. He is renewing the truth that he has learned from his father, King David. Life without God is, indeed, futile, a running after the wind.
How blessed we are, who have been chosen by God, to say with the Apostle Paul from 2 Timothy 1:12b:
…I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
At the beginning of another new day, the only response to this we can make is a hearty “Amen.”
