Ecclesiastes 9
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave where you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10, NKJV)
Bookends are an interesting object. They mark the beginning and end of multiple stories. What if you were going away for a long time and could only take a dozen books. Which ones would you take?
Birth and death are bookends of our lives. Between these two immovable boundaries are all the stories of life. Mortality is the concept that there is a second bookend coming. We don’t know where it lies. We don’t know how many more stories we will have before reaching it. But we do have some power in which stories will be written. Other people are reading our lives. Which stories do we want them to read? How do we want to be remembered?
In his wisdom, Solomon understood that life was finite. Our labor in this world is limited by how many years we are given. Solomon lacked the revelation we have concerning the afterlife. We know from the story of Lazarus and the rich man that there is in fact knowledge where we are going. We know from the apostle Paul that, for those who are in Christ, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:6). Nevertheless, we only have so much time to accomplish what we want to do. Yes, we want to finish well, but in the meantime, we want some wonderful stories to be written.
Therefore, Solomon counsels us to work wholeheartedly at whatever our hand finds to do. But we could go one step further.
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23–24, ESV)
Rather than merely doing what our hand finds to do, we can be strategic, knowing that we are serving the Lord Christ. We are not serving ourselves, nor others, as much as we are serving Jesus. Therefore, we should work at it with all our hearts in the few years we’ve been given between the bookends.