Well, the book of Ecclesiastes is inigmatic, it's puzzling, it's puzzling because it

tells us that much of life is vanity, chasing after wind.

Says this from the second verse of the book, meaningless, meaningless, says the teacher

utterly meaningless, everything is meaningless, but God's Providence tells us that everything

in life is meaning full.

So what gives, this is a sharp email question from David in Brookville, Pennsylvania.

Hello Pastor John, I've read a quarter of your new book Providence, the avalanche of

scriptural evidence to prove that nothing is random, nothing is without purpose, nothing

is pointless, and nothing is meaningless, is truly overwhelming.

My question is regarding Ecclesiastes.

If Providence proves that nothing is random or meaningless, why does Ecclesiastes repeatedly

say just about everything in the drama of human life is meaningless?

How do you reconcile this?

Well, I do admit that Ecclesiastes is a perplexing book.

I suspect that the author of Ecclesiastes, the preacher, co-healant, and Hebrew, I suspect

that he intended it to be complex and perplexing precisely because, as we look at the world

that he was looking at, it was a perplexing world.

I find the book of Ecclesiastes probably the most difficult book in the Bible to understand,

but it is in the Bible and the Bible that Jesus loved and Jesus esteemed and Jesus considered

to be infallible.

And I don't believe that the message of the book contradicts the overall message of

Providence in the Bible as a whole.

...