Solomon's Porch: Calling It Quits

That’s when I called it quits...

• gave up on anything that could be hoped for on this earth. 
• What’s the point of working your fingers to the bone if you hand over what you worked for to someone who never lifted a finger for it? 
• Smoke, that’s what it is. A bad business from start to finish. 
• So what do you get from a life of hard labor? Pain and grief from dawn to dusk.
• Never a decent night’s rest. 
• Nothing but smoke.

Excerpt From Ecclesiastes

The Message

Eugene H. Peterson

Everything ends the same way...

• though I have been good and clean and respectable, 
• my end will be the same as the brute. 
• Though I labor all my days, I shall end the same way as the man who has not labored.  

Some folks are persuaded or have the notion... 

• that the kingdom of God can be brought in without the Redemption—
• all that is needed is to put certain wise restrictions in vogue. 
• Solomon says he tried to do that, but it all ended the same as if he had lived like a fool.

Emerging out of it all comes one Voice—

• “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” 
• The way out is not by intellect nor by aesthetics, 
• but through conscience in contact with Jesus Christ.

Adapted Excerpt From

Shade of His Hand

Oswald Chambers