Daily Lesson for June 16, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verses 7 through 10:

All streams run to the sea,

    but the sea is not full;

to the place where the streams flow,

    there they continue to flow.

8 All things are wearisome;

    more than one can express;

the eye is not satisfied with seeing,

    or the ear filled with hearing.

9 What has been is what will be,

    and what has been done is what will be done;

    there is nothing new under the sun.

10 Is there a thing of which it is said,

    “See, this is new”?

It has already been,

    in the ages before us.

On Sunday I quoted the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, who was writing in the context of the rise of the second World War, which would join the first in making the 20th century the deadliest on earth.  Niebuhr had seen the late 19th and early 20th century hopefulness of technological and moral progress give way to a sense of despair that though humanity could make so much progress technology it still could not solve the age-old problems of war, poverty, and destruction. Here's the quote: “We have, or ought to have, learned, particularly from the tragedies of contemporary history, that each new development of life . . . presents us with new possibilities of realizing the good in history . . . but that we also face new hazards on each new level and that the new level of historic achievement offers us no emancipation from contradictions and ambiguities to which all life in history is subject.  We have learned, in other words, that history is not its own redeemer.” We see again and again the same troubles of the world revisiting us.  Massive inequity, racial strife, cities on fire, wars and rumors of war.  The more things change; the more they stay the same.  Or, as it is put in the Lesson this morning, "All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full". All waters do run to the sea; but then they return.  We have to accept this.  We have to understand that this side of heaven we will never really get "there". So, we have three choices.  The first is despair.  The second is avoidance.  And the third is faithfulness. Let's choose the third.

NOTE: We're reading the whole Bible together this year.  Tomorrow's Lesson comes from Ecclesiastes 7-12.