The Gift (Remastered)

Exploring My Strange Bible

BibleProject

Religion, Theologian, Tim Mackie, Pastor, Bible, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness, Strange Bible, Philosophy, The Bible Project, Exploring My Strange Bible, Christianity

4.9 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Ecclesiastes E2 — In the first teaching of this series, we explored the teacher’s core metaphor for life, which is the Hebrew word hevel, meaning “smoke” or “vapor.” The teacher takes a pretty dim view of things, saying that everything in life is unpredictable, enigmatic, absurd, and ungraspable. So what do we do with such a sobering truth? In this message, Tim explores how embracing life as hevel can actually be a gift to enrich our days, rather than diminish them. Tim gave this message at Door of Hope Church in Portland, Ore., on January 13, 2013.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everybody. I'm Tim Mackie, and this is my podcast, exploring my strange Bible. I am a card-carrying
0:15.0	Bible history and language nerd who thinks that Jesus of Nazareth is utterly amazing and worth following with everything that you
0:23.4	have. On this podcast, I'm putting together the last 20 years worth of lectures and sermons where I've
0:29.8	been exploring the strange and wonderful story of the Bible and how it invites us into the mission
0:35.9	of Jesus and the journey of faith.
0:38.1	And I hope this can all be helpful for you too.
0:40.4	I also help start this thing called the Bible Project.
0:43.1	We make animated videos and podcasts and classes about all kinds of topics in Bible and theology.
0:49.5	You can find all those resources at Bibleproject.com.
0:52.8	With all that said, let's dive into the episode for this
0:55.0	week.
1:01.4	All right, this is part two of a three-part teaching series on the book of Ecclesiastes.
1:07.6	We're unpacking the main themes in the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.
1:12.2	And in this teaching, we build off of the first one, which was exploring the core metaphor,
1:19.3	the teacher, the skeptic in this book, has about all of life, that all of life is hevel,
1:25.4	that is unpredictable, enigma, absurd, ungraspable. And so in the light of
1:32.1	that fact, the teacher takes a pretty dim view of you being able to get really a lot of leverage on
1:39.6	controlling your life or even understanding its meaning, which is not something you expect to hear from
1:45.5	the Bible, but there it is.
1:47.6	So how do you respond to this really sobering truth?
1:50.8	And that's what we explore in this teaching.
1:53.3	There's a handful of passages in the book of Ecclesiastes where the teaching voice says
	...

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