"Wisdom Is Much More Than Experience"

As I have slowly been working my way through Solomon's Ecclesiastes these last few months, I haven't yet figured out exactly what he spent so much time trying to understand. Case in point:

"When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe man's labor on earth - then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all his efforts to search it out, man cannot discover its meaning. Even if a wise man claims he knows, he cannot really comprehend it." Eccl 8:16-17 NIV

Throughout this enigmatic book, Solomon writes a lot about death being the common fate shared by all men and animals and concludes that life is essentially meaningless. I have to absolutely reject that!

His assumption that he has seen "all that God has done" seems a bit shortsighted. I'm sure NO ONE has ever seen "all that God has done" or is doing. The realization that I have NO idea what God is doing in someone else's life was like a hurricane had blown through my spirit. In a very short time that knowledge had "blown" away many of the same kind of shortsighted assumptions that I had held for a long time.

Solomon is right that we humans can never discover the meaning or purpose or even properly contemplate the result of much that goes on around us, but that doesn't make all of life a meaningless pursuit of nothing. And, just because death and the grave are the common experience of all of us, there is much more going on that we cannot discern in an empirical sense. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of all people of true faith.

Some may disagree and that's okay, but my life has had and continues to have very deep and broad meaning for me, my family and many others in my life. And, I'm not alone. I personally know lots of good people whose lives have great meaning in their families, their communities and in the kingdom of God. So, I'm kinda' sad for Solomon that his "golden years" failed to give him a sense of joy and meaning. He just never knew what I and others of faith have come to know, like Paul -

"If we live, we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord, so whether we live or die we belong to the Lord." Romans 14:8 HALLELUJAH!