Ecclesiastes 9:1-2, 7-10
God's Blessings in Simple Things

All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know. Everything that confronts them is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice.
    As are the good,
    So are the sinners;
    Those who swear
    Are like those who shun an oath.

Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.

New Revised Standard Version

The Bible tells us King Solomon was the wisest ruler who ever lived (1 Kings 3:12), but in that blessing from God, Solomon also experienced frustration and even depression, as we see this gifted man try to figure out what life meant. Throughout Ecclesiastes, he wrestles with good and evil, riches and poverty, and it never did make sense to him, because this world is all he knew, and after this world came the nothingness of Sheol for everyone.

By New Testament times, Jewish theologians had started to understand that there would be a life after the earthly one, a life that would complete the work of God's justice started in this life, although God had not revealed much yet to them about this life after death. In the person of Jesus, we get the completeness of that story, the missing pieces to the puzzle that bothered Solomon so much in Ecclesiastes.

Still, Solomon understood enough to provide us great insight in how we are to live. He knew that it was wrong to defy God's commandments, and he saw that some wicked people faced calamity in their earthly lives, but some also prospered. He observed some people who devoted themselves to being as righteous and religious in the sight of others as they could be, but it seemed that they, too, faced prosperity or calamity in the same measure as the wicked. How could this be?

Solomon deduces that a righteousness we manufacture ourselves is no better than wickedness. As long as we are depending on ourselves to achieve great goodness for the praise of others, Solomon would say like Paul that we are just noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. It is not the big, visible righteous actions we take, but the small, unnoticed acts of goodness that are what please God.

Look then at the second part of this passage. Live the life that God has given you. Find joy in your present circumstances instead of striving for what might or might never be. Enjoy the work that God has put in front of us, because God wants to bless us in the simple acts of living. It is when we let go of our self-driven goals that we allow God to work through us -- it is the bumper sticker "let go and let God" 3000 years before there were bumpers!

No where is this wisdom more true than in a church! Surveys in the past have shown that one of the most important selection criteria for families in choosing a church is how clean the nursery is. Every preacher has hundreds of examples of how members of the congregation were moved by an obscure phrase in a sermon that had little to do with the main theme -- but because that person could hear that one phrase at that instant, God was able to work wonders in their lives. Stories abound about how God used simple interactions between people to show love, just like Jesus taught in several places that God will reward those offering a thirsty person a simple cup of water.

Whatever work you have at hand, no matter how large or how small, no matter whether anyone notices at all -- do everything with enthusiasm and with joy, because God blesses us in simple things!