Daily Lesson for June 12, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verses 14 and 15:

14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun.

There are some things about life that just can’t be figured out. A good man loses his job while a scoundrel is promoted to the top. “Right-sizing” was the official word for the cut.  The PR team came up with that. They still have their jobs. It’s a travesty and everybody who knows the good man knows it’s just about to kill him. Where does he go now — at his age? Meanwhile, the scoundrel is about to get a community leadership award at some big black tie dinner.  I tell you, there are some things about life that just defy all explanation.

“Vanity, vanity,” the Wisdom teacher says. “All is vanity.”  Or, as my people out in West Texas put it, “Sometimes life don’t make a lick of sense.”

There’s an old Garth Brooks song called “Wolves” that’s about life and loss and knowing how lucky some are to have made it through life’s winter season. One of the stanzas goes like this:

Charlie Barton and his family

stopped today to say goodbye

He said the bank was takin' over,

the last few years were just too dry

And I promised that I'd visit,

when they found a place in town

Then I spent a long time thinkin'

'bout the ones the wolves pulled down.

The one the wolves pulled down is no worse than anyone else. He didn’t deserve to be taken down anymore than anybody else. The others caught a break; he didn’t. It could have gone the other way. 

The Wisdom writer also said this: “The Race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor riches to men of understanding; but time and chance happen to them all.”

Sometimes life doesn’t make a lick of sense. And the best thing we can — the only decent and human thing we can do — is make good on our promise to go and visit Charlie Barton when he gets settled.