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There are seasons in life when the ground beneath us feels utterly solid — when health is good, relationships are whole, and the future seems bright. In these seasons, Solomon’s reflections can feel deeply heavy, and many prefer not to meditate on them. Still, we are wise to learn from Solomon even in times of joy, for it is always right to lift our eyes beyond this fading world toward the heavens because no one is immune to seasons of darkness. In those moments his words will become meat in due season — when the phone call comes for which no heart can truly prepare, or when our own health begins to slip quietly from our grasp. There will always come a day when the darkness is not a metaphor but reality.
It is into those moments — and into the anticipation of those moments — that Solomon speaks. And he does not speak gently. He does not offer tidy comfort or easy reassurance. He opens his mouth and says what most of us have only thought in our darkest hours: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." Solomon was not a broken, forgotten man writing from the margins of history. He was the wisest man who ever lived, the builder of God's own temple, the king at the height of Israel's glory. And yet from that vantage point — perhaps precisely because of that vantage point — he looked out at the whole of human endeavor and declared it rubbish.
Consider where Solomon stood when he penned these words. He had overseen the construction of the temple — that magnificent, God-ordained structure at the center of Israel's worship. And yet what did he see within its courts every single day? He saw the priests rising each morning to offer sacrifices for sin. He saw the blood of bulls and goats poured out on the altar again and again. And then, again the next day. And the day after that. The cycle was unbroken and unbreakable, because the sacrifices could never actually accomplish what they were offered to accomplish. They were, in the deepest theological sense, vanity — not because God ordained them imperfectly, but because God ordained them precisely to show us that human effort — even religious human effort — cannot bridge the chasm between a holy God and sinful man.
This was the design. In Colossians, Paul would later confirm what Solomon perceived: that the law was a shadow of the good things to come, not the substance itself. The temple, in all its glory, was a pattern — a finger pointing forward to something it could never itself become. Solomon, staring into the machinery of Israel's worship, may well have felt the full weight of that inadequacy. Generations come and generations go. The priests labor and labor. And the earth simply continues to turn.
Remember Your Creator Before the Dark Days Come
But scripture does not leave us without direction. As Solomon closes the book of Ecclesiastes, his tone shifts from despair to exhortation. In chapter twelve, verses one and two, he writes:
Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth, before the evil days come and the years draw near of which you will say, 'I have no pleasure in them'; before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain.
Notice the certainty in his language. He does not say the dark days may come. He does not offer the possibility as a contingency. He says before the evil days come — because they will. The clouds will return. The sun will be darkened. There is no life under the sun that escapes the arrival of suffering, loss, or the slow erosion of everything we hold dear. Solomon is not being morbid for its own sake, but honest in the most pastoral sense — he is preparing us.
That word remember carries the full weight of covenant language in the Hebrew tradition. It is not merely an intellectual exercise of calling God to mind. It is to orient the whole of one's life — one's trust, one's dependence, one's hope — toward the God who made us and sustains us. The time to root yourself in that anchor is not when the storm is already upon you. It is now, in whatever measure of light you presently enjoy. Because the darkness, when it comes, will test the depth of every root.
The Light That Darkness Cannot Overcome — Matthew 5:14-16
Of course Chris, God does not leave you in darkness but prepares you for it. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns to His disciples and says:
You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
There is something quietly important in the image Jesus chooses. City lights set on a hill are not most visible at noon, but at night. No one stops to marvel at an illuminated city in the full blaze of daylight. It is the darkness that makes the light extraordinary. Jesus is not calling His people to avoid difficulty or to seek comfortable circumstances in which to display their faith. He is calling them to shine precisely in the darkness — to let the reality of their hope in Him become luminous against the backdrop of suffering and evil.
This is not a burden, but a calling. And behind that calling is a sovereign God who does not place His people in darkness carelessly without hope. He places them there purposefully — so that through their steadfastness, through their unshaken trust in Him, others who are stumbling in the same darkness might find the light that leads to life. The darkness does not have the final word. It never has. As the Apostle John reminds us, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Christ: The Lamb, The Priest, The Temple
We return now to where we began — to Solomon's declaration that all is vanity, that the toil of man under the sun yields nothing, that generations rise and fall while the earth rolls indifferently on. And we ask: is he right?
He is right about everything he can see. Under the sun, in the realm of purely human effort and earthly striving, the diagnosis is vanity. The priests labor and accomplish nothing lasting. The generations turn like the seasons and are forgotten. The temple itself, for all its gold and cedar and the glory that once filled it, would one day lie in ruins.
But Solomon was writing as a man looking under the sun. The Christian reads Ecclesiastes with the benefit of standing on the other side of the cross. And from that vantage point, we see what the temple could only foreshadow. Jesus declared Himself to be the true temple — the dwelling place of God among men. He is also the great High Priest, not offering sacrifice day after day in an endless, insufficient cycle, but offering Himself once, for all, with a sufficiency that no bull or goat could ever provide. And He is the Lamb — the one John the Baptist pointed to when he cried, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world."
What the temple priests could never accomplish in an eternity of daily sacrifice, Christ accomplished on a single Friday afternoon outside Jerusalem. The vanity of human religious effort is not a hopeless verdict — it is a prepared emptiness, designed by God to receive the fullness of what only Christ can provide. Redemption is not the reward of human toil. It is the gift of His death and resurrection. The grave could not hold Him, and because it could not hold Him, it need not hold us. The darkness of death itself has been swallowed up in His victory.
Stand Firm — Conclusion
So we come to this: the darkness is real. Solomon does not permit us to pretend otherwise, and neither does experience. Dark days come for every soul that draws breath under this sun. And when they come, they come with a weight that can press the life out of hope itself — if that hope is built on anything this world can offer.
But our hope is not of that kind. It is not built on health or youth or prosperity or the continuation of what we love. It is built on the person and work of Jesus Christ — who lived the life we could not live, died the death our sin demanded, and rose from the dead with the authority to say that death itself is no longer the end of the story. That hope does not fade. It does not erode with the generations or collapse under the weight of suffering. It is abiding.
So, Chris, stand firm — not in your own strength, because Solomon has already told us plainly what human strength achieves. Stand firm in the truth that salvation is found in Christ alone, that He is the door, that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. And in the standing, let His light shine through you — not because you have manufactured some counterfeit peace, but because you have been gripped by the genuine article. The world around you will notice that your hope does not yield to the darkness. And in noticing, some of them will ask why. And in the asking, you will have the opportunity to point them to the only light that the darkness has never once, in all of history, been able to overcome.
Remember your Creator. Stand firm in His truth. And rest in the hope that is not under the sun, but above it — secured by the one who made both the sun and the darkness and holds them both in His hand.
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