In this short section, the teacher illuminates 3 conclusions.

#1:  God has appointed man with the unhappy ‘business’ (or burden) with a quest for meaning.  I find this fascinating.  The restlessness that we feel when we are challenged with the notion that life is meaningless, that derives from this need to engage in something, to be active in doing something.  We are compelled in that way, and we think and plan.  We wants to understand where his life is going and we can’t help ourselves in this. This is the burden which, by God’s decree, every man bears.  You know, I have definitely felt that.  I DO feel that.  That’s God in me.

#2:  The second conclusion is that we are frustrated - ...by #1.  He desires a sense of gain in life, of satisfaction, or progress...but we struggle to get that need filled.  We are faced with problems which we finds insoluble, with history which is repetitive and without hope - like we can’t help ourselves.  We see this ‘striving after the wind’ phrase, and my study Bible sites that the context equally suits two ways to view this: frustration by the insoluble, or ambition for the unattainable. The latter is almost certainly the meaning here...either way though, the result is this frustration.

So, we are appointed with an ‘unhappy’ quest for meaning, we are frustrated because we feel like we are chasing after something that we can’t truly find, and then #3: we can only come to the conclusion that we aren’t equipped to know everything we need to know to resolve #1 and #2...there are twists and turns, there are gaps in life, and we can’t straighten out certain anomalies and condense things down into a perfect system.  In a sense, the more we understand, the more we know, the more we know that we don’t know...wisdom is an abyss.

Now, again, that sounds very dark, and almost hopeless.  But we can take something from this...think about it, if we can’t find the answers to this life in this life and we’ve been given the quest to find that meaning, then it is there, we just have to discover it.  You can’t find the painter in the painting...but you can learn a lot about Him, and you can understand and know that He is out there.  Similarly, if we want to find meaning, as the teacher will eventually lead us to conclude, we have to look to the Creator.  The conclusion is an argument for God - if life has meaning, it can only be because there is a God that gave it meaning.  By extension, if we are to experience satisfaction in life, true meaning in life, God has to be a part of our story.

Deep stuff today...wow!