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That Happy Certainty - Gospel | Culture | Planting
Bible

16 Steps to Putting Your Life in Perspective: Journeying Through Ecclesiastes

I feel like I’ve been banging on about Ecclesiastes on the blog for a while now. It was my ‘wellies’ Bible book a couple of terms ago (and if that makes no sense, have a read of this post), which in turn led to us preaching through it in South Barrow during Lent this year. Ecclesiastes manages to be at the same time densely rich, intriguingly beautiful and undeniably brutal. And overall I’ve found spending time with God in Ecclesiastes has been like a breath of fresh air. 

Anyway, along the way I wrote a series of sixteen daily devotions going through the whole of Ecclesiastes – and you can pick them up in the July-October ’17 edition of Explore, a set of quarterly dated Bible-reading notes which aim to “help you read, understand and apply the extraordinary truths of God’s word, every single day.”

exp79_medium3d-6eh5j4m74oeadzvl4enmf2bgbvxzqj6bI think Ecclesiastes is a book with a bit of a reputation – and sadly that can often stop us from opening it up. And yet it has such a life-giving message (albeit one that surprises us and confronts us too). 

If that’s whetted your appetite at all, you can pick Explore up from The Good Company here. You get ninety-two daily reflections for just £4.49 – bargain! –  and as well as covering Ecclesiastes, this edition also looks at Luke’s gospel, Ezra, Philemon, Psalms, Titus and Micah. Or download the app and pay through that.

I’d really love to get your feedback – especially if you’re not familiar with Ecclesiastes. I’d love to hear how God speaks to you through this portion of his Spirit-breathed word. Why not join the Explore Facebook group to share your thoughts, encouragements, questions and prayers?

screen-shot-2017-06-07-at-11-56-48Of course, as the Teacher in Ecclesiastes is keen to remind us, there’s nothing new under the sun. Personally, I’ve really been helped in my own grappling with Ecclesiastes by David Gibson’s excellent book, Destiny (my review here), Iain Provan’s commentary, Barry Webb’s Five Festal Garments (a fab introduction to Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther), as well as three talks I heard by Brian Elfick at a North-West Partnership Ministers’ Day.

If you’ve not come across Explore before, it’s well worth checking out. Spending a little bit of time reading and praying through the Bible each day is a brilliant rhythm to get into – even if it’s just five minutes. There are lots of ‘daily Bible reading notes’ out there, but one of the things I love about Explore is that its big aim is to push you into the Bible, rather than just skimming along the surface. Anyway, that’s what I’ve valued about Explore in the past – I hope this doesn’t tarnish that reputation!

You can hear a bit more about the vision behind Explore from Carl Laferton, the Senior Editor, here:

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July 27, 2017by Robin Ham
Christian life, Culture

After the Craziness of 2016, Here’s My Word of the Year For 2017…

The jury has reached a unanimous verdict: 2016 was an altogether unrelenting beast.

Without wanting to regurgitate what’s been countlessly covered in all those ‘looking back on the year’ programmes and weekend paper supplements, 2016 had many lethal strings to its devastating bow: the worrying new wave of terrorist attacks on western soil; countless incidents of tragic migrant drownings; the bloody carnage of Aleppo; the never-ending stream of celebrity deaths, often ‘before their time’ and right up until the last few days of the year. And then there was the shock and division of Brexit, followed by the almost unbelievable ascendancy of Trump. 2016 seemed to leave the world feeling like a different place than it was before.

So, perhaps with the exception of Leicester City fans, it’s no surprise that most of us are glad to be seeing the back of this past year. ‘Thanks, 2016’, as countless memes put it.

I guess January 1st will always end up being treated as if we’re turning a blank page, with the promise of vague hope and apparently guaranteed change. And yet because of all we’ve seen these past twelve months, 01/17 is being held up as even more of a fresh start than normal, a precious doorway out of despair and darkness into the light.

And, of course, that’s not even to consider the personal circumstances of our own lives in 2016.

Now throw into the mix the traditional custom of making new year resolutions, and you can start to see why 2017 might well be buckling under the weight of all our hopes and dreams. If years were performers, 2017 would surely be suffering from a severe case of opening night stage-fright: “There’s no way I’m going out there; they all expect too much.”

And we daren’t ask whether we’ve got any right to be quite so expectant; we’d just prefer not to imagine the alternative, thank you very much. Crack that fortune cookie open, force a smile, jot down some positive resolutions, and hope for the best.

Convinced? 

Me neither.

But over the last few weeks I’ve become increasingly fond of one little word that I think will serve us surprisingly well in 2017, if we let it soak into our souls.

It’s not a word that is going to crop up in the columns of news-sheets or the tweets of C-list celebrities. It’s not a word you’ll hear thrown around your local or dropped into conversations at the hairdressers. And yet I’m persuaded it’s a word that holds the power to illuminate the year ahead and prepare us for all that may come our way.

Here it is: hebel.

Not heard of it? That’s ok, it’s Hebrew for a start.

It occurs throughout a perhaps undervalued part of the Bible known as Ecclesiastes, and it’s a word that’s often translated into our English translations as either “vanity” or “meaningless”. In fact hebel occurs a staggering 38 times in Ecclesiastes, which is more than in the rest of the Bible put together. The barefaced writer of Ecclesiastes scatters the word all over his observations on the world, again and again describing life as hebel. And to really drive home his conclusion, his opening and closing salvos include this particularly explosive rocket:

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 1v 2-3)

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher; all is vanity.” (Ecclesiastes 12 v8)

That’s called making a point.

So what value does all this have for us as we head into a new year? Am I suggesting that the solution to facing 2017 is being a glass-half empty person? Just set the bar so low that you can’t possibly be disappointed?

Actually, no.

Hebel isn’t about unadulterated pessimism, contrary to how Ecclesiastes is often perceived. It’s not about the cynical pontifications of some overly-dramatic philosophy undergraduate. Nor is it about the despondent groans of a miserly Scrooge, as the ‘meaningless’ translation can imply. If it were, that would give us little relief or purpose as we face up to a new year.

But Ecclesiastes has something far more refreshing to say about life.

Because actually ‘meaningless’ is a slightly unhelpful translation of hebel. Primarily it’s a word that referred to breath or vapour, something fleeting and transient in nature. It’s the early morning mist on a winter’s day, soon to be burnt up by the rising sun, or the enchanting wisp of smoke that temporarily hangs in the air after you blow out a candle.

Understanding that life is hebel is not to dismiss it as meaningless, but is rather to conclude that, though life is full of meaning and significance and joy, it remains elusive. It is hard to catch and bottle. It slips through our fingers before we know it. In other words, I don’t think the writer of Ecclesiastes would have been particularly surprised by 2016. He’d be moved at the tragedies and he’d be glad of the good times, but he wouldn’t be fazed. After all, 2016 is hebel.

And so as we move into a new year, and especially a year that many of us are pinning our hopes on, Ecclesiastes warns us to give up on approaching 2017 as a quest to achieve and attain – whether happiness or permanence or security or legacy. We can be liberated from the lie that life is about carving out a name for ourselves, plotting and scheming to be somebody and gain something.

And this is where the tyre of our expectations hits the tarmac of hebel.

If life is fleeting and a gift from God, then instead of trying to make it a means for our own gain, we need to receive it as the gift that it is – from the God who is good. A God who has entered this world of hebel  in Jesus Christ so that we can know him. Don’t begin January expecting to reach December having achieved anything, or aiming to leave a particular legacy. If we do, we’re flying in the face of hebel.

Instead hebel says receive – and consider your Creator, whom you receive it all from. Enjoy every good thing that comes our way this year: food, friends, family, work, breath. That’s where joy and purpose are found, not in the striving for gain. 

And don’t be surprised: 2017 takes place in a broken world. Maybe it won’t feel as overwhelming as 2016, but you can be pretty sure we’ll still encounter the hopelessly tragic, the bitterly unjust, and the despairingly wasteful.

So at this time of year when we’re encouraged to fill our journals with resolutions and summon up within ourselves almost superhuman levels of positivity, I hope hebel feels like a breath of fresh air. Because that’s pretty much what life is, breathed out by God.

Hebel is a reminder of reality, liberating us from the lie that life is what you achieve and painting a picture for us of the transient, tragic, and often frustrating backdrop against which we live out our created existence. The very same backdrop against which we will live out our 2017s. And our 2018s. And every day of our lives ’til the day we have our final breath.

Hebel.

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December 31, 2016by Robin Ham
Book Reviews

Destiny by David Gibson – A Review

If, as the author of Destiny argues, Ecclesiastes “is a meditation on what it means to be alive in a world that God has made and called good, yet which has also gone so very wrong, often in catastrophic ways,” then I’d suggest it’s a book of the Bible that should become a lot more precious to us than it probably is.

rsz_9781783592852After all, you don’t have to go far in life before things don’t go to plan. And if we’re feeling like life has lost any sense of rhyme or reason, or if we’re feeling like the sandcastles of our existence are becoming engulfed before our very eyes, then David Gibson wants to encourage us to see Ecclesiastes as God’s gift to us.

That might sound a bit odd at first. But give it a read and I think you’ll be persuaded. And if Ecclesiastes is God’s gift to us for those seasons, then reading Gibson’s book Destiny is kind of like having someone sit us down to unwrap the gift, in order to help us appreciate it in all its fullness. (And by the way, even if you’re not feeling those things right now, then Destiny is still for you, because you can bet that experience will come.)

Destiny actually feels like an increasingly rare type of Christian book. That’s because Gibson doesn’t take on a particular topic or a doctrine. He isn’t trying to answer a certain question or provide advice into a specific situation. And it isn’t a memoir or a biography. Rather Gibson simply walks us through the book of Ecclesiastes. And although he’s recently preached through Ecclesiastes with his church in Aberdeen, Destiny doesn’t read as one of those book manuscripts where the sermon transcripts have been hastily copied and pasted to churn out a paperback. In other words it reads well. Each of the chapters begins with an excerpt from the Bible and then Gibson just warmly unpacks the text before applying it and showing its often-piercing relevance. 

A couple of weeks ago I shared my thoughts on pastors always having a Bible book we’re ‘wading deep’ in (click here to read them). At the moment for me it’s Ecclesiastes. And so when I heard about Destiny I was eager to get my hands on it. I’d come across Gibson’s writings before and had found his writing both engaging and insightful. I’m encouraged that I’m not the only one, as the back-cover of Destiny has commendations from Old Testament devotees and legends like Dale Ralph Davis and Alec Motyer – no small indicator of the measure of the work David has produced in Destiny!

Now you might well be thinking, “hang on, just back up a minute: a whole book – just on Ecclesiastes?!’ And, ok, you have a point my friend. Because I think it’s fair to say that Ecclesiastes generally tends to carry a bit of a bad rep. Sometimes it’s made out to be depressing and overly-negative. Other times it’s treated as if it’s only use is as evangelistic talk fodder: “look, isn’t life meaningless without God?” (That or funeral addresses!) And perhaps the rest of the time Ecclesiastes is just seen as down-right confusing. If nothing else, how on earth does this relate to Jesus!?

And so right there you have three reasons why getting hold of Destiny is a good move, because allowing David Gibson to walk you through Ecclesiastes is a huge deal more refreshing than one might first expect:

  1. For a start, Gibson is convinced that Ecclesiastes’ message should lead us to joy, not to despair. I’ll admit, that initially made me raise an eyebrow. But after journeying with him through Eccleasistes I was persuaded. And then the more I let Gibson walk me through Ecclesiastes, the more that was my actual experience as I spent time in Destiny.
  2. He also points out that the main narrator of the book, ‘The Teacher’ seems to be fully aware of God and yet still wants to highlight that life has an inescapable ‘mistiness’ about it (perhaps a better translation than the NIV’s meaningless). This is a far cry from either the ‘believer-posing-as-a-sceptic’ reading or the full-on ‘atheist manual’ angle, and I think our Bible is all the richer for it.
  3. Lastly, Gibson’s gentle and persuasive commentary is a practical guide to a book that’s sometimes seen as slightly impassable ground. That said, it never feels like he’s trying to force the text into his own packaging. In particular, his appreciation for the intentionally-elusive feel of the book is to be commended.

Sometimes someone might open up a part of the Bible with us that will completely change how we read it from that point on. Be it a sermon series, or a particular talk, or even a book – it might seem like we now grasp the book with a new clarity – often because we sense its significance more tangibly in our life. And although it’s early days, I’m tempted to put Destiny into that category already. Maybe that’s partly because – at least in my experience, anyway – Ecclesiastes hasn’t been a portion of the Bible I’ve often encountered from start to finish. But I think it’s mostly because Destiny is really, really good at capturing Ecclesiastes’ heartbeat. And God’s word unleashed is a powerful thing. 

Lastly, quality book covers should always be appreciated, so credit to IVP for this one – strong and simple.

You can pick up Destiny here.

Disclaimer: The publisher has sent me a free copy of this book, but I hope this is still a fair and honest review.

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November 8, 2016by robinham

About Me

 

Hello, my name is Robin. Welcome to That Happy Certainty, where I write and collate on Christianity, culture, and ministry. I’m based in Barrow-in-Furness in South Cumbria, England, where I serve a church family called St Paul’s Barrow, recently merged together from two existing churches, St Paul’s Church and Grace Church Barrow.

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“If we could be fully persuaded that we are in the good grace of God, that our sins are forgiven, that we have the Spirit of Christ, that we are the beloved children of God, we would be ever so happy and grateful to God. But because we often fear and doubt we cannot come to that happy certainty.”
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