A WORLD ABOVE THE SUN

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun goes down, and hastens to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north;around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full to the place where the streams flow, there they flow again. All things are full of weariness;a man cannot utter it;the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,and there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said,"See, this is new"? It has been already in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.  Ecclesiastes 1:3-11

Matthew Henry's commentary on Ecclesiastes 1
 

The sun sets indeed every night, yet it rises again in the morning, as bright and fresh as ever; the winds, though they shift their point, yet in some point or other still they are; the waters that go to the sea above ground come from it again under ground. 

That all things in this world are movable and mutable, and subject to a continual toil and agitation, constant in nothing but inconstancy, still going, never resting; it was but once that the sun stood still; when it is risen it is hastening to set, and, when it is set, hastening to rise again; the winds are ever and anon shifting, and the waters in a continual circulation, it would be of as bad consequence for them to stagnate as for the blood in the body to do so. And can we expect rest in a world where all things are thus full of labour, on a sea that is always ebbing and flowing, and her waves continually working and rolling? 

That though all things are still in motion, yet they are still where they were; The sun parts, but it is to the same place; the wind turns till it comes to the same place, and so the waters return to the place whence they came. Thus man, after all the pains he takes to find satisfaction and happiness in the creature, is but where he was, still as far to seek as ever. 

Man's mind is as restless in its pursuits as the sun, and wind, and rivers, but never satisfied, never contented; the more it has of the world the more it would have; and it would be no sooner filled with the streams of outward prosperity, than the sea is with all the rivers that run into it; it is still as it was, a troubled sea that cannot rest.

 

That all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. The earth is where it was; the sun, and winds, and rivers, keep the same course that ever they did; and therefore, if they have never yet been sufficient to make a happiness for man;

Man's heart, and the corruptions of are still the same; the desires, and pursuits, and complaints, are still the same; and what God does in his dealings with men is according to the scripture, according to the manner, so that it is all repetition. What is surprising to us needs not be so, for there has been the like, the like strange advancements and disappointments, the like strange revolutions and sudden turns, sudden turns of affairs; the miseries of human life have always been much the same, and mankind tread a perpetual round, and, as the sun and wind, are but where they were.

 

What reason have we to think that the world should be any kinder to us than it has been to those that have gone before us, since there is nothing in it that is new, and our predecessors have made as much of it as could be made? 

 

We must acquaint ourselves with the things of God, get a new nature; then old things pass away, and all things become new, (2 Cor 5:17) The gospel puts a new song into our mouths. In heaven all is new (Rev 21:5) all new at first, wholly unlike the present state of things, a new world indeed (Luke 20:35), and all new to eternity, always fresh, always flourishing. This consideration should make us willing to die, that in this world there is nothing but the same over and over again, and we can expect nothing from it more or better than we have had. There is a world above the sun, a world which needs not the sun, for the glory of God is its light.

Photo: Dawn on the Pond, © Angelina Lenahan