I want to remind you, encourage you, as well as myself, that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Paul asserted such to the Corinthians at the end of his great argument for the Christian’s resurrection.

Therefore (in light of your resurrection to immortality and glory in Christ’s resurrection), my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

You might suppose that certain resurrection, to an existence where perishability and dishonor and weakness is no more, would make our sowing in the natural, temporal body only as significant as the dust we’re made from (see 15:42-44, 49). But Paul says the opposite. And if we connect it with the same wisdom Solomon pundit-ed we grasp that our perceiving of life beyond the sun is the only guarantee of meaning and joy in our toil under the sun.

All sorts of things are ramping up even as summer winds down. The school year, arbitrarily determined as it is, sets almost as many of our current rhythms as the calendar year and the changing of seasons. The start of the school year is a mini restart, and whether you are a student or parent or parent-teacher or teacher or just someone who drives through slower-speed limit school zone traps, we can see that there is a Wholelotta Work to do.

And, as much as ever it would be easy to be disturbed/distracted/discouraged from our work because the world has gone crazy. The world is in a war of crazy. The world is full of those apparently trying to outdo one another in crazy (contra outdoing one another in showing honor as Paul exhorted in Romans 12:10). In many ways the crazy is hard to ignore. As the man pointed out in “Hoosiers,” there is a difference between a man who gets naked and howls at the moon and a man who does the same thing in your living room. Folly seems omnipresent, if not eternal. But folly isn’t either. The Lord gives His people perspective—wisdom and hope, as well as pleasure—a glad satisfaction, when He enables them to see beyond the sun, when we know there is more than the disrobed howler in eye-sight.

So as you get back into a season of earlier mornings (maybe), and moldy water bottles, as the rain inevitably returns and dampens your enthusiasm, as you keep watching the (intentional) damage being done to us, our country and companies, by our own representatives, may the word of the Lord encourage your labor in the Lord, and may He give you enjoyment in the process.

Having Only Half

All of what we have is gift . We have nothing that we weren’t given (1 Corinthians 4:7), even if what we were given were “raw” resources to obtain other things. It’s important to remember that because we’re supposed to be thankful to the Giver, and also because we cannot make or find joy on our own. This is the dark side of King Solomon’s coin in Ecclesiastes 6.

Solomon observed a heavy evil, a brutal burden on men who are given everything they think that they could want except for joy.

he lacks nothing of all that he desires, yet God does not give him power to enjoy them (Ecclesiastes 6:2)

This man has money, toys, and respect. He has a thousands-of-years long life (6:6) and hundreds of great-grand kids (6:3). But he doesn’t have thankfulness, “his soul is not satisfied” (6:3), whether it’s because he wants more and more (the law of diminishing returns) or because he finds that his huge pile really is hollow. All he has is in this life, and all he has still isn’t the life he wishes for.

Ecclesiastes describes the vanity of vanities under the sun, that is, life not in and for the Lord. “Under the sun” is almost a technical phrase to describe the perspective of the this-aged man, the man for whom the present is his only perspective and priority. Solomon himself tried to find his happy place, and couldn’t find it through great projects or many women or feasting parties or platonic contemplation. Work and wife and wine and weekends aren’t wrong per se, but unless they are received as gift from God they can never be a satisfactory god. Solomon had great exterior glory (per Jesus in Matthew 6:29), but it could not make him glad.

We are relentlessly tempted to think that gladness is a step or two away. Gladness is Then. It’s sure to be found at the bottom of the laundry basket, when the inbox is empty, when the work week is over, when the final grades are entered, when the baby comes out, when the mask mandates are not just over but vindicatedly over.

It’s like saying that we’ll be glad when the sun stops and the earth is still. Celebrate the ends, sure, but finishes and the ability to hold them well also comes from God. He alone gives power to enjoy them.

How Time Flies

There are a few similar sections in Ecclesiastes about where real joy is found. The first is in 2:24-26, the second is in 3:12, and the third 5:18-20. This third buoy sets up the contrast in chapter 6, and gives us wisdom to know how time flies.

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 (Ecclesiastes 5:18)

As contrasted with evil and vanity/emptiness (6:2), this is good and fitting , quotidian joy-finding.

To eat and drink are to live, they are ordinary and daily, with only breathing more vital, but typically less consciously accomplished. Even when you’re on vacation you eat and drink. Solomon wasn’t writing wisdom for a bunch of vacation hopefuls anyway, but for the day laborers.

He calls it toil twice. Since Genesis 3 it’s been hard work (NET), labor (NASB), travail (Wycliffe), and not recess. Toil makes tired. Toil takes a toll. Toil, even for your dream job, still means your time isn’t spent doing something else.

Find enjoyment in it, not after it or outside of it. Find in enjoyment in all of it, not just from 9-5, or 4 days per week, or a majority percentage. The Hebrew verb is just “see,” which means look for it, hence find it. Just as whatever food you eat and beverage you drink, so whatever work is toil, whether professional or amateur, whether for business or household, whether glamorous or menial. Does it need to be done and are you doing it? Find the joy in it.

The fact that you will only be around for about four thousand weeks (80 years, see also Psalm 90:10, which also says “their span is but toil and trouble”), on earth is no discouragement to God. Your days are given, they are gift, including—and this takes wisdom—the gift to see all that did not get done today.

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. (Ecclesiastes 9:10)

We spend too much time looking for a better job instead of looking better for joy. What a gift, that we live in a day when there are all sorts of ways to earn money to buy food and wine so that your body can turn those into more energy for work (and joy). But we are missing out by focusing on a resume instead of focusing on rejoicing. “Can rejoice no matter the job” would be a lot of virtue on a cirricula vitae.

Looking for joy in all the wrong places, namely, in the places we’re not. We’re supposed to find joy, not find the job.

There’s more.

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. (Ecclesiastes 5:19)

We’re back to seeing all of life as gift, and here is the complete package, including acceptance of assignment, including vocation without feeling the vanity, including enjoying the process. The phrases overlap. Power to enjoy is conscious gratitude, accept his lot is conscious gratitude, and rejoice in toil is conscious gratitude.

You don’t have to be here at all. None of the good, none of this work, none of you or me is necessary for the universe. It is gift. Your job, seen from beyond the sun, is amazing. Who knew that could be a job? Who knew people would pay you to do it? Who knew how frustrating it could be? Who knew you had so much endurance in you?

Such sight, and the purpose to see good, is gift. Not everyone gets it.

In chapter 2 Solomon says it similarly:

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? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind. (Ecclesiastes 2:24–26)

As Doug Wilson once illustrated, God gives cans of peaches and God gives can openers. The blessed get both.

It’s what makes time seem like it is flying by.

For he will not much remember the days of his life because God keeps him occupied with joy in his heart. (Ecclesiastes 5:20)

I am not saying that everyone needs to be Tigger, but it is a sign of judgment that our culture has no bounce. We are consumed with envy, with perceived hurts and grievances, with complaints about how everyone else is so wrong. We have become the Discontents, the Malcontents, and this is not because we see better, it is because we are blind. We are speaking the same language, just like babbling is one, so is grumbling (γογγυσμός); it all sounds the same. Such misery is a slow burn, and makes every line feel longer.

Even in our battles, may there be more rejoicing, more of a jovial warrior spirit. What I mean is, jovial in the joy of the Lord, not that we get to humiliate another human, even if that man is presidentially incompetent.

Conclusion

Here’s a pithy point by C. S. Lewis in his address, “Learning in Wartime” given 51 days after Germany invaded Poland at the beginning of WWII:

“Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment ‘as to the Lord.’” (62)

Be decisively joyful. Let joy be the bass drum, always setting the pace. Gird your loins to rejoice in your toil—this is the gift of God. Yours is a lot of rejoicing.

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Charge

Don’t fear those who are only living for this life because that’s the only thing they can see. Their narrow, and anxious, concerns make sense to them, but we do not need to adopt the same shortcomings. Look to the hand of God, and to the Son of Man who is at God’s right hand (Acts 7:55; Colossians 3:1; 1 Peter 3:22), for your work and rejoice (!) in wonder of all He’s given.

Benediction:

Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:57-58, ESV)