Life as a Gift: Ecclesiastes part 2

Finding Enjoyment

Ecclesiastes 2:24–25 ESV

There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?

Activities into Accumulation and Hobbies into Hoarding

But we turn activities into accumulation and our hobbies into hoarding. We can’t just enjoy something, we often have to win at it. get the most of it. We turn what is normal and good into some kind of twisted heap of consumer based need gone crazy.
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Ecclesiastes 6:7–9 ESV

All the toil of man is for his mouth, yet his appetite is not satisfied. For what advantage has the wise man over the fool? And what does the poor man have who knows how to conduct himself before the living? Better is the sight of the eyes than the wandering of the appetite: this also is vanity and a striving after wind.

Life is a gift to be received, not a given to be taken

But still, in saying that all is vanity, and in saying that it is all striving after the wind, in saying meaning is hard to come by, he is not saying that there isn’t any good in the world. In fact he is saying there are good things in the world.

But instead of treating them as items to be collected, we can treat them as gifts to be received.

All of life is a gift, not a given.

Ecclesiastes 5:18–20 ESV

Behold, what I have seen to be good and fitting is to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all the toil with which one toils under the sun the few days of his life that God has given him, for this is his lot. Everyone also to whom God has given wealth and possessions and power to enjoy them, and to accept his lot and rejoice in his toil—this is the gift of God. For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 ESV

Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.

Gift giving is an intentional focus on the relationship between the giver and receiver.

Christ has come to us in the incarnation

Ecclesiastes 3:9–14 ESV

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.

Colossians 1:15–17 ESV

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

Life is a Gift to be Received from God

James 1:17 ESV

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.