For How Long Am I Young?

When I was preaching through Ecclesiastes 9:13-10:8, I mentioned that I’d written a poem and had someone read it out at the start of the meeting. The poem reflects on how when we’re younger we try to grow up too fast, but then when we’re older we’re trying to cling on to youth.

Life in Hindsight?

Ecclesiastes 9:13-12:8

Well, it was the final preach for me in the Ecclesiastes series, and although I found it the hardest one to prepare, it went fine. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed preparing the series and preaching the sessions that I did. Ecclesiastes is a fantastic book but one that still maintains a certain amount of enigma to it! I opened with a poem I’ve written, which I may well share with you later this week.

Life in Contrast?

Ecclesiastes 5:8-9:12

What a chunk to deal with! I’ve never preached on such a large portion of scripture before, but I did enjoy doing so yesterday. It went well and in order to read enough to get the gist of what was going on in that chunk I introduced the first reading just as a poem—not telling the congregation until afterwards that it was part of the passage. I read Eccl. 7:1-14 in the New Century Version.

Life in Perspective?

Ecclesiastes 3:16-5:7

Having arrived back from holidays, yesterday was the first preach I did in Malpas Road’s summer series on Ecclesiastes, life? Meirion Thomas preached the first two, which I was unhelpfully away on holiday for.

What’s the Point in Life?

Earlier today, I grabbed a couple of the youth in our church and we headed down into Cwmbran and Newport to film people answering the question, “What is the point in life?” The video will be shown to kick off our Ecclesiastes series which is coming up soon.

Ecclesiastes Series

I’ve been asked to organise a series on Ecclesiastes to run over the summer. The best known bit of Ecclesiastes, made famous by The Byrds and their ‘to everything turn, turn, turn’ and by funerals, is the bit where it talks about a time to be born and a time to die, a time to cast away stones and to gather them together (Eccl. 3:1-8).

Revision #6

WISDOM LITERATURE #1: The message of Ecclesiastes

Determining the message of Ecclesiastes is a difficult task, not least for the number of diverse opinions on the matter. The book certainly seems to fit with the ‘pessimism literature’ of the Ancient Near East (ANE). Ecclesiastes is different to these other ANE sources, however, as it isn’t merely unrelieved and relentless pessimism but contains aspects of hope, joy, faith and assurance in God. On the message as a whole though there are many perspectives. Much of the discussion revolves around the Hebrew word hebel which literally means vapour or breath.