Ian Pethick, MA(Oxon)

Ecclesiastes doesn’t pretend that life is tidy.

It tells the truth about life “under the sun”: beautiful, brief, confusing, and often out of our control. The Teacher’s ultimate conclusion is that we should stop grasping, receive God’s gifts with gratitude, fear God and live faithfully in the ever changing and fleeting seasons of life.

Eternal God,
when I chase certainty
and try to control what I can’t control,
quiet my restless heart.

Loosen my grip on what won’t last.

Teach me to receive today as a gift,
to live with open hands,
and to trust You fully.

Amen.

“Meaningless! Meaningless! … Everything is meaningless!” (NIV)

“Meaningless” is the translation of a Hebrew word that is more like…

breath.
vapour.
mist.

Not “nothing.”
Not “worthless.”
More like: you can’t grab it.

You’ve seen your breath on a cold morning.
It’s there.
And then it’s not.

And that’s the Teacher’s point.

Life is real but

life won’t stay in your hands.

You can work hard.
Plan well.
Build something good.
And still… you can’t control how long it lasts.
Or what happens next.
Or who takes it from you.
Or who inherits it.
Or what they do with it.

Which is why this verse hits a nerve.

Because so much of our anxiety is basically this:

Trying to secure what can’t be secured.

Trying to make ourselves safe.
Trying to guarantee outcomes.

And it wears you out.

Because if you live like it’s all on you,
like if you just think hard enough,
work long enough,
plan far enough ahead…

then maybe you can finally relax.

But you can’t.
Because there’s always one more “what if.”
One more loose end.
One more thing you didn’t see coming.

And Ecclesiastes just looks you in the eye and says:

This is what it’s like to be human.

Breath.
Vapour.
Mist.

So the Teacher isn’t trying to crush you.
He’s trying to free you.

He’s saying: stop demanding certainty from a world that can’t give it.
Stop asking your work, your savings, your status, your plans
to carry the weight of eternity.

Because they can’t.

Do I need permission to be human: limited, fragile, unfinished?

What am I trying to hold onto that I may need to release?
 

God of dust and breath, 

I remember that I am fragile. 

I remember that I am loved. 

Teach me to let go of what doesn’t matter, 

and to return to you with my whole heart. 

Amen.

“the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.”

Ecclesiastes 12:7 is a single, sober sentence that holds two realities together: dust and breath.

It says, “the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.” It isn’t trying to scare us, or flatten life into pessimism. It’s telling the truth about what we are finite, fragile, dependent and yet held by God from first breath to last.

This verse reminds us that we are formed from dust, animated by God’s breath, and our days are given rather than owned. Life is not ours to secure or control; it is ours to receive and steward. Throughout Scripture, wisdom often looks like humility about our limits and trust in the God who gives life.

The Bible doesn’t teach a spirituality that floats above mortality. It teaches a faith that can look death in the face without denial, naming our frailty, grieving honestly, and still turning toward God. 

Ecclesiastes reminds us:
We often live as if we are not dust.
We postpone what matters.
We cling to what cannot last.

But Ecclesiastes also invites a wiser way to live: to remember our Creator now and to live awake, with open hands. To receive each day as gift. To release what we cannot keep. And to entrust our breath, our spirit, our life, to the God who gave it.

What do you reach for first when you feel anxious and what does that reveal?

What would you be afraid to lose, and why?
What loss would expose what you’ve been living for?

What are you trying to control that you actually need to entrust?
What are you refusing to grieve because it would mean admitting change is real?

God of peace,
free me from striving and fear.
Teach me to receive what you give today,
and release what I cannot control.
Give me peace in my work
and rest in the night.
Amen.

Ecclesiastes 2:17–26 is one of the rawest passages in the book. It holds two realities together: toil and gift.

“So I hated life…” 

The Teacher has worked, built, achieved and yet it turns bitter, because what he has made will not stay in his hands. He must leave it to someone else, and he cannot control what they will do with it. It’s telling the truth about what work cannot do: it cannot secure us, it cannot guarantee outcomes, and it cannot carry the weight of ultimate meaning.

This section names the hidden cost of striving: not just tired hands, but a restless heart. “All their days their work is grief and pain… even at night their minds do not rest” (v23). 

Ecclesiastes isn’t describing a busy calendar so much as a mind that can’t stop, an inner life colonised by the need to prove, achieve, and protect what we’ve built.

But then the passage turns. Not to denial, but to a different kind of wisdom: “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their toil… this too, I see, is from the hand of God” (v24). 

Teacher suggests that real enjoyment, contentment, comes as gift, not as something we can force through control.

Ecclesiastes reminds us:

We often ask work to give us what it cannot: identity, security, significance.
We cling to outcomes we cannot control.
We carry tomorrow’s burden into tonight, and wonder why we can’t rest.
 

But Ecclesiastes also invites a wiser way to live: to work faithfully without worshipping work; to receive your portion as gift; to release what you cannot secure; and to trust God with what comes after you.

What are you afraid will happen if you stop striving?

What outcome are you trying to control that you need to entrust to God?