Eat, Drink, and Be Especially Joyful
Thirty-One Meditations on Eccelesiastes
by
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Read Ecclesiastes 2:1-11.
Pleasure is Serving
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. . . . Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.
––Ecclesiastes 2:10a–11
Incredible!
A man with one thousand wives and girl friends, storage rooms full of gold and silver, and so much wisdom that people from all the world come for advice suggesting all those pleasures are “chasing after the wind.” Yet, it is true. I am never satisfied when I covet world goals.
If I make wealth a pleasure, someone else will spend it.
If I make fame a pleasure, someone else will outdo me.
If I make corporate status a pleasure, someone else will climb over me.
I once thought of pleasure as something to receive. Like an income tax refund, a sunset in Idaho’s Sawtooth mountains, a guitar, campfire, and songs to sing.
But I read these words Charles Lamb wrote in Table Talk by the late Elia: “The greatest pleasure I know, is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.”
So I have changed my pattern. I try to help other people find pleasure by pointing out the promises of Jesus.
I am never sure of the results, but once in a while someone will tell me they have found that pleasure in their life.
It is then I have a faint tingle of the joy I will experience if Jesus says to me, “One of the least of my brothers was hungry and you gave him something to eat. Another was thirsty and you gave him something to drink.”
I may wonder who Jesus means, but I will feel the ultimate pleasure when He says, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world” (Matt. 25:34b).
__________________
Let me substitute service for selfishness,
Lord, so that my search for pleasure will be
in Your will not mine.
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About the Book
The teacher in Ecclesiastes first offers a pessimistic attitude toward life. Good people as well as bad people die. The world is inscrutable and futile. Some scholars say the teacher believes there is more to learn at a funeral than at a party.
If you are fully awake to life—not hiding behind fear or the fantasy of easy optimism—you will find another attitude from a trustworthy teacher who has looked directly at the charring anomalies of life and has still found fertile springs that can outlast the heat of the sun.
Richard Hagerman stirs the research of that wisest man in the Old Testament into the promises of the New Testament Savior, Jesus Christ, and makes them a palatable elixir of life.
May Eat, Drink, and Be Especially Joyful help you find the Christ who will always be the gift by which men and women of all genetic backgrounds can eat, drink, and be especially joyful.
About the Author
Richard H. Hagerman has served as a Sunday school teacher to all ages (kindergarten through adult), church elder, Presbytery moderator, General Assembly delegate, and pulpit supply.
He has written for Guideposts, Daily Guideposts, Smithsonian magazine, Saturday Evening Post, two men’s devotional books, Time Out and Take Five, three devotional magazines, These Days, The Upper Room, and The Quiet Hour, and many Christian publications including Decision magazine, Power for Living, Evangel, Hi-Call, and Starlight. His book Phebe, Courier for Paul was published in 2008.
Hagerman helped build a library building for the Sierra Leone Bible College in Sierra Leone, Africa. He retired after thirty-eight years of dental practice and lives with his wife, Dorothy, in Wendell, Idaho.