Freedom from, Freedom to

Book Club | Eat, Drink & Be Merry: Chapter 5

Jul 05, 2026

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.”