Meaningful and Meaningless...Yes.

Meaningless...all is meaningless! so writes the writer of Ecclesiastes.

Working hard is meaningless.

Building up your investments is meaningless.

In the end the poor, the rich, everyone dies.

Such is the picture of life the writer of Ecclesiastes paints for us.

But how different the world looks to the writer of Proverbs.

For the author of Proverbs, the world runs like clockwork. Hard work leads to big rewards. Laziness leads to destruction.

Do the right things and good things will happen.

Everything has meaning.

How can these two books be in the Bible? They say such different things?

And the amazing thing about this is that the author of both Proverbs and Ecclesiastes is Solomon. It's no accident that these two books find themselves right next to each other, back to back in the scriptures.

Because they are both true.

There are times when life makes no sense.

There are times when life seems to be going no where.

There are times when we are at wit's end.

And it is true that most of the time, we find ourselves in a world that makes sense. Work hard and things go well. Be lazy and we will reap the consequences of laziness.

This is life.

And I'm glad life is portrayed in an honest real way in scripture.