“Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.”
Ecclesiastes 12:13 (NKJV)
I finished reading Ecclesiastes again this morning. Twelve chapters of Solomon wrestling honestly with life, meaning, frustration, uncertainty, repetition, injustice, and the limits of human understanding. As I reached the end, something unexpected happened. Rather than feeling unsettled by his questions, I found myself recognising my own story in his reflections, particularly in the light of my prayers earlier today.
This morning I thanked God for His hand over my life from the very beginning. I found myself reflecting on my early years, my stepfather adopting me, the tangled sense of identity I wrestled with as a young man, and the long season of life I lived without Christ. My thoughts then turned to the last thirty five years, and to the patient, gentle work of the Lord slowly untangling the knots I had created before I ever knew Him.
As I sat with Ecclesiastes, it became clear that Solomon was describing the same journey, simply from a different angle.
Throughout the book he strips away every illusion of meaning. Wealth, pleasure, work, success, legacy, and knowledge are all tested and found wanting. Everything lived “under the sun” runs in circles, fades with time, or ultimately fails. Everything we are tempted to use to define ourselves eventually slips through our fingers.
That was my story too.
For thirty five years I lived under the sun, doing life on my own terms, searching for meaning, and trying to build something solid out of things that could never truly hold it. Like Solomon, I attempted to understand identity without God at the centre. The result was much the same as his. Tension, confusion, and a tangled mess largely of my own making.
Yet the turning point in Ecclesiastes mirrors the turning point in my own life.
When I met Christ, the search ended. The centre returned. Meaning came back into focus. Not because I became a different person, but because the same life finally came under the hand of its Maker.
Solomon concludes his long and searching journey with a single, simple sentence. Fear God and keep His commandments. This is everything.
That is exactly what happened to me. Questions about identity, origin, purpose, and direction gradually fell into their proper place when Christ took His rightful place at the centre of my life.
Looking back now on my childhood, my youth, my tangled years, my conversion at thirty five, and now my seventieth year, I see the same truth Solomon discovered. Life only makes sense when God is placed above the sun, not merely beneath it.
Without God, my early years were shaped by uncertainty. With God, my later years have been shaped by clarity. Without God, I struggled to understand who I was. With God, I discovered that I had been His child all along. Without God, my choices tightened the knots in my life. With God, His grace has patiently untangled every one of them.
So this morning, on the day after my birthday, and having finished Ecclesiastes once again, I find myself grateful for something I never expected. Even the confusing parts of my story now make sense, and the older I grow, the more clearly I see the steady thread of God’s faithfulness running through it all.
Solomon was right. Nothing else truly holds. Nothing else ultimately lasts. Nothing else gives lasting meaning. But God does.
And at seventy years old, that truth has never felt clearer or more precious.
Lord, thank You that the search ends in You. Thank You for being the meaning of my life, past, present, and future.
Amen.
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