somewhere, over the rainbow

The Word for today:
Ecclesiastes 7, 8

Mark this: Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.


Ecclesiastes is a record of the dark, empty, shapeless heart of man:
A man has nothing better under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry. (Ecclesiastes 8:15a)

It is the spiritual equivalent of the natural realm before God's Word arrived to dispel the darkness:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.  (Genesis 1:1-2)

But God didn't leave the world in the dark:
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)

And he doesn't leave us in the dark either:
Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, "I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life." (John 8:12)

***

The heart of the naturally-born man, seeing by the light of the sun, remains unfulfilled and uncomprehending:
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

But Jesus said that there is another birth, when faith meets the blood of his cross, that takes us out of uncomprehending darkness:
Jesus answered and said to him, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." (John 3:3)

Ecclesiastes is a record in real time of the Holy Spirit hovering over broken lives, bothering and pestering us with our own emptiness, letting the hollowness of our days and the shallowness of our own words bring us to the conclusion that there has to be a better way; that, somewhere over the rainbow, there has to be a brighter day.

Those born again through faith in Jesus Christ don't just get eternal life. They also get new eyes. So while the man in Ecclesiastes cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end, those born of the Spirit can see all the way from Alpha to Omega:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. (Revelation 22:13)

Ecclesiastes tells us that God has set eternity in our hearts--a sense of something beyond ourselves--an unfulfilled longing, an empty place to fill in. But it doesn't have to stay that way:
I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. (Revelation 21:6 )