Welcome to week 5 of Book Club, friends.
Ray defines the pain and vexation we are to eradicate, in this way:
“Vexation means bitter discontent—our brooding self-pity, envious grievance, fearful worry. And pain means gnawing misery—our reckless self-indulgence, evil choices, anguished regrets.” (p. 72)
We are probably more familiar with pain and vexation than we’d like to admit.
If we honestly evaluated our hearts, we’d likely find we experience at least one of those descriptors of pain and vexation on a daily basis.
And why shouldn’t we? This world is fallen and corrupt—which means we toil by the sweat of our brow, adversaries are scheming against us, we are misunderstood and unloved, our confusing appetites pull us in different directions, we make poor choices and live with the consequences.
Shouldn’t circumstances like this warrant a little vexation of heart? A little wallowing in the pain?
We’re tempted to romanticize the suffering—to cry, “woe is me,” garnering the applause of a misguided audience.
But Ecclesiastes says no, “remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body.”
Why?
You are not your own. You were bought with a price. 1
This means we don’t get to decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. We have a Master, and we must submit.
Does that sound like slavery to you? Oppressive? Freedom stealing?
It’s not.
Remember with me, the story of the exodus.
Israel was under the tyranny of Egypt and all its power. They were forced into hard labor by one who hated them—their bodies crushed under the weight of an unbearable burden. They were vexed of heart—groaning in the bitterness of their souls.
It is from this that God delivered them. He set them free. He broke the bonds of Egypt’s power from their blistering wrists.
Freedom.
Freedom from Egypt—but freedom to what?
“Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.”2
Freedom from Egypt was not simply opening the gates to a world of anarchic, unordered possibility—that was the world before God made light and land and us.3
It was making a way into real freedom—freedom to voluntarily do what is Good.
Freedom is having the capacity and the choice to live well—to do what is right, to love mercy and do justice, to walk humbly with our God.
Slavery is knowing what is Good, but rejecting it at the command of a corrupt, tyrannical master—which is usually our own sinful self, the pharaoh of our hearts.
Ecclesiastes is offering us freedom: “remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body.”
“Ecclesiastes if freeing, but it’s also demanding. Good!” (p. 71)
We want to hold ourselves in bondage to our corrupt desire—wallowing in our slavery of self-pity and worry.
God wants to set us free—to serve Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.
We have a Good Master—One who is for us, and our good.
Remove vexation from your heart.
Put away pain from your body.
This is Freedom.
Receive it joyfully from the Hand of generosity.
What were your thoughts on this chapter? Share in the comments!
See you next Saturday (7/11) for Chapter Six!
1 Cor. 6:19b-20a
Exodus 7:16 (emphasis added by me)
Genesis 1:2
I appreciated Luther's letter to his friend on page 79. Isn't that the blunt encouragement we all need from time to time? "No matter how unwilling you are to live, you are going to live and like it!"
I love the term "glorious ruins" - beauty in decay (page 75). That's us in this life: made glorious and marred by sin. But thanks be to God that He didn't leave us here to decay. I'm reminded of 2 Cor. 4:16. "So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day."
And so we LIVE the life God has ordained for us. Enjoying the blessings He gives, being thankful for the blessings He has taken away, and looking to the hope of communing with Him in glory.
There is one part in particular that really resonated with me during this chapter. It was on p. 79, where he discussed the letter Martin Luther wrote to a friend. In it, he addresses the fact that his friend is going through some really dark stuff. There was a theme that stood out to me the most and that was where Luther was writing to tell his friend that he had to tell his dark thoughts to be gone and had to get to the point where he can make the decision and say to himself, "I must eat, drink, ride, go, or do this or that" literally telling himself to Eat, Drink and Be Merry which is a big theme of the book of Ecclesiastes. Specifically, verse 2:24, which says, "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," verse 25 goes on to talk about the theme that we can't have the wisdom to "eat, drink and be merry" apart from God. I think that's what Ray talks about on the next page when he writes about Luther counseling "us to avoid solitude, keep hanging out with friends, and keep having good times in the midst of hardship." This is the constant reminder we need to continue to "SEE the mountains in the mundane."