Straightening a Paper Clip: Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

Have you ever tried straightening a paper clip?  Try as you may you cannot get it perfectly straight.  I suppose you could resort to heating it until the metal becomes malleable and use some rolling process to get it straight, but without that and just you against the paper clip the perfectionist inside you will be frustrated.

This is the experience of the Preacher with life.

I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.

What is crooked cannot be made straight, and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said in my heart, “I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.” And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind.

For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow. (Ecclesiastes 1:12-18, ESV)

The Preacher has been blessed with position and wisdom to enable him to do a search, a search for the answers to life.  He has already discovered that life is an “unhappy” business (the word translated “unhappy” could mean “evil” but that does not seem consistent with the perspective of the author).  God has given mankind work to be busy with but it does not seem to be successful at solving life than does trying to catch the wind.

Though he has acquired more wisdom than any before him he has found his search aided by wisdom to also be unsuccessful at figuring out life.  In fact, knowing as much as he knows has only compounded his “vexation” and “sorrow.”  He cannot come to a satisfactory explanation.  Explanation for what?

We will see that what he is seeking to discover is the way to guarantee that his future, indeed the future for anyone, will be a good one.  Will living with wisdom guarantee a positive future?  Will righteousness guarantee that?  Will great accomplishments?  No one is poised to better figure that out than him.  So he sets himself to the task.

In his autobiography Mark Twain said, “A myriad of men are born; they labor and sweat and struggle…they squabble and scold and fight; they scramble for little mean advantages over each other; age creeps upon them; infirmities follow…those they love are taken from them, and the joy of life is turned to aching grief. It (the release) comes at last—the only unpoisoned gift earth ever had for them—and they vanish from a world where they were of no consequence…a world which will lament them a day and forget them forever.”

Is that the truth?  The Preacher must know.