Ecclesiastes 7:14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.
Recently I was with some friends riding a train from Williams, Arizona to the Grand Canyon. The train car we were riding in had been built in 1923, and we were enjoying a ride back through time. We were going about forty miles an hour, the windows were open, and there was no air conditioning. We were talking about the old days, days that we had not experiences ourselves, and we were talking about the modern day. One of my friends commented on how unhappy so many people, specifically young people, seem to be today.
Today we have things that no one even thinks about as a luxury any more, but they really are. Air conditioning has only been available in the last sixty years and primarily only in certain countries. We have everything. We have money, security, and climate-controlled lives in so many ways, yet so many young people are unhappy. It seems to me that the more perfect things become, the more perfect we expect them to be so that we can never get enough good to make us happy. The sooner we learn that things will never be good enough to make a person happy the better.
King Solomon was a man who had everything, including money, comfort, ease, entertainment, and wisdom. He had it made both mentally and physically. Solomon was set. But Solomon says in Ecclesiastes 7:13, “Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?” Think about God. Who can change what God has decided? Verse 14 continues, “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other, to the end that man should find nothing after him.”
When you read these verses, you get a sense of providence. We know that God is good and in this life there is both adversity and prosperity. They are balanced one against the other. Many times we feel like they are out of whack, but the bottom line is that there is a God in Heaven and He is good. It is a sense of providence.
What you learn from this is that a quiet heart comes from a sense of providence and not from attaining perfection. I’m not advocating fatalism. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to better things, ourselves most certainly. We should work hard and have goals, but the truth is that we should find joy whether we have adversity or prosperity. If my joy only comes on sunny days when everything is perfect, I’m set up for failure. If I have a sense of providence, that there is a God Who controls things, it changes my whole perspective on life.
Anything is preferable to thinking that we do not need God, and that is why prosperity is sent against adversity, to the end that man should find nothing after God. We need to realize that the greatest good we can find is God Himself. That is why we are told earlier in this chapter that the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. It is a sense of providence, not perfection. I want to work to make things better, but I don’t have to have a perfect day, a perfect car, a perfect body, a perfect wardrobe, or a perfect set of friends in order to have joy in my heart and life. No, that quiet comes from a sense of providence, and that, of course, requires patience.