Advent Devotional by Jason Edwards

Ecclesiastes 1

What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? (Ecclesiastes 1)

"Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."

Or is it?

This is the existential conversation Ecclesiastes invites us into, one that ultimately prompts the question: What is meaningful?

The sage of Ecclesiastes (known as Qoheleth) paradoxically ponders this question, just as the "spirits" of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol prompt it in his protagonist, Ebenezer Scrooge. As we look back and as we live forward, how shall we identify and excavate meaning? What is the substance of a life worth living?

David Brooks opines on this in his New York Times article exploring the difference between resume and eulogy virtues:

Résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. Eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral — whether you were kind, brave, honest, or faithful. Were you capable of deep love?

Might even deep love be a chasing after the wind? Perhaps. But in the end, Qoheleth and Scrooge point us to profit in the pursuit.

This Advent, the strange pairing of Qoheleth's writings and Dickens's Carol, offers us the opportunity to enter a season of pondering what it might mean for each of us to identify, embrace, and embody what is (deeply) meaningful?

May the advent space and stirrings offered in this devotional guide help us all as we engage in this truly profitable (and prayer-filled!) pursuit.

With expectation,

Jason Edwards, Senior Pastor