Ecclesiastes 9:1-10 - Everything is in God's hands

9:1,2

.Everything is in God’s hands, and no one has a complete handle on life. We can live life trying to have full control of everything, but such a course is futile, for none of us can have complete control. It just causes us stress to try and gain full control. The alternative is to live to please God and to trust in Him. At one level the good and the bad receive the same. God sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous (Matt 5:45).

9:3-6

The teacher considers it evil that the same destiny overtakes us all. He also recognises that people’s hearts are full of evil. Having earlier said the dead are better off than the living, he now seems to reverse course saying “even a live dog is better off than a dead lion. Even complete cynicism/realism does not provide a satisfactory answer to life. He now argues that the living are better off than the dead.

9:7-10

So he reaches his usual conclusion.”Go, eat your food with gladness, drink your wine with a joyful heart, for God has already approved what you do”. We are to make the best of life. “Enjoy life with your wife. “ A wife is a good thing, a good gift from God, so we should enjoy being together. \if we seek to fully understand everything we will just give ourselves grief. We are all heading for death, when we can do nothing more, so we should do what we can while we live.