September 2

OT -- Ecclesiastes 1:1-3:22
A small confession to make. I have never read Ecclesiastes. Even when I taught it for Sunday School a couple of years ago, I only read the verses in the Student book and used their commentary.

What a mistake.

The opening verses of the book identify it as a work of Solomon although he is not named. Even if he did not write the book, it clearly is his memoir.
And it is not the memoir I expected.
"Meaningless, Meaningless. Everything is meaningless!"

This is a man, probably in late mid-life, going through the whole 'what on earth am I here for' crisis. I have watched many men and more than one woman go through this. They divorce their wives, quit their jobs, buy new toys, alienate their children, try to become their children, all in the name of Meaningless, Meaningless. Everything is meaningless.

And I have those same impulses but not on a larger scale. Mine usually comes from laundry. What is the point in doing laundry? It just ends up in the basket the next day, needing to be washed again. And with boys who sweat, I do a lot of laundry.
Over the years, I have tried a lot of things to handle the drudgery of laundry. Praying for my loved ones as I fold the same pair of Batman pajamas for the 1000th time. Timing myself to see if I can beat the clock and get a load folded and put away. And the all time effective one -- going to the laundromat and getting every bit done in an hour and a half. An amazing feat when you have have 10 sweat suits in the wash.

But I have ended up where I started, doing laundry. I am actually doing it right now as I type this. But it is not meaningless and here is why. My family appreciates clean, tidy clothing. They tell me so. They ask me to wash their sheets and hang them on the line to dry so that they will smell 'like sky'. It took Matthew and me 10 minutes to figure out which laundry detergent to take to school because what I use (Costco ginormous) is not feasible in a college dorm room. The smell matters to him.

It will be interesting to see if the Teacher (the author of the book Ecclesiastes)comes to the same realization that I do -- it is not meaningless if it shows your loved ones you care.

Meanwhile, enjoy another pop into 70s music via the Teacher. It is too bad that I didn't know it was a depressed poem way back then. I might not have liked it some much.


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