In 1975 Britain’s economy was in trouble with inflation running at 20% and many major businesses struggling to stay afloat. An unpopular Conservative Prime Minister had lost the confidence of his MPs but was refusing to stand down. He had to be forced into a leadership contest which he lost. Although in the end he didn’t put his name forward, the favoured candidate to take over proposed swinging tax cuts to get the economy going again. All sounds rather familiar, doesn’t it? Just goes to show that, rather depressingly, there really is nothing new under the sun.
Such was the thinking of the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes found in the Bible. He begins by writing that ‘everything is meaningless’ because ‘what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again.’ In the spirit of Eeyore he bemoans the pointlessness of pretty much everything in life from the pursuit of pleasure and wisdom to riches and advancement. Despite all this he ends his book with the thing that really counts, saying ‘fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind.’
It turns out that the wisest thing a person can do has always remained the same – put God first and serve Him only.
