{"id":35365,"date":"2016-05-13T09:44:34","date_gmt":"2016-05-13T14:44:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=35365"},"modified":"2016-05-13T09:45:05","modified_gmt":"2016-05-13T14:45:05","slug":"nothing-new-under-the-sun-an-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2016\/05\/nothing-new-under-the-sun-an-excerpt\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing New Under the Sun: An Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NNUTSAn excerpt from the first chapter of my recently released book, Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Chapter One<\/strong><\/p>\n

Privileged, loved, educated, wealthy, this is what I saw: emptiness, futility, vanity. Everything is ephemeral. Everything crumbles to dust in your hands. Everything passes away. There is no escape.<\/p>\n

What good does it do to work hard and get ahead? Whole generations are born, suffer, work themselves to exhaustion, and die with nothing to show for it\u2014all while the world spins in place, unmoved by their coming or going. The sun rises, the sun sets, and then it rises again. The winds, indifferent, rush past. Rivers empty endlessly into a sea that will never be full.<\/p>\n

All of this, relentless, repeats again and again. It uses me up. No matter how many stories I\u2019m told or how much beauty I see, it\u2019s never enough. I\u2019m still left wanting more.<\/p>\n

The present repeats the past and the future repeats the present. Nothing is new. Nothing on God\u2019s green earth or under God\u2019s blue sky\u2014nothing under the sun\u2014moves us to shout: \u201cLook, it\u2019s new!\u201d Everything is an iteration of what went before. Things only seem new because our memories are short. No one remembers what happened last week, let alone last year. We forget everything and our children remember even less.<\/p>\n

I ruled in Israel. I made things happen and got things done. I pledged my heart to understanding what God requires. I considered all the things that people build and achieve and, in the end, I was forced to confess their futility. God has given us nothing but busywork. All our efforts only lead in a circle. Nothing changes. Everything is empty and futile and vain. Two steps forward and three steps back.<\/p>\n

Time erodes every gain\u2014and time cannot be stopped. Trying to stop time is like trying to bottle the wind. The wind cannot be bottled. What is crooked cannot be made straight. The holes in our hearts can never be filled.<\/p>\n

Then I thought: but I\u2019m special, the normal rules don\u2019t apply. I\u2019m smarter and stronger than other people. I can see more clearly and I\u2019ve read more books. What wisdom there is, I\u2019ve gathered it. So I tried to determine what advantage wisdom had given me over madmen and fools\u2014but, again, it was futile. There\u2019s no lasting difference I can tell. All of my learning has only made me feel more alone. My wisdom is all hot air. More knowledge just means more heartache.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An excerpt from the first chapter of my recently released book, Nothing New Under the Sun: A Blunt Paraphrase of Ecclesiastes: Chapter One Privileged, loved, educated, wealthy, this is what I saw: emptiness, futility, vanity. Everything is ephemeral. Everything crumbles to dust in your hands. Everything passes away. There is no escape. What good does it do to work hard and get ahead? Whole generations are born, suffer, work themselves to exhaustion, and die with nothing to show for it\u2014all while the world spins in place, unmoved by their coming or going. The sun rises, the sun sets, and then it rises again. The winds, indifferent, rush past. Rivers empty endlessly into a sea that will never be full. All of this, relentless, repeats again and again. It uses me up. No matter how many stories I\u2019m told or how much beauty I see, it\u2019s never enough. I\u2019m still left wanting more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":35366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/05\/NNUTS-cover.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35369,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35365\/revisions\/35369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}