There is definitely a theme in scripture of being loyal to your leaders...not passively loyal to a fault, but loyal and honoring for sure.  And we see the teacher commanding that here - that we be loyal to the king.  In a sense though, it gets me thinking about this hierarchy and it makes me think about God.  Think about this - if you have children, you understand some things about God that would be hard to understand otherwise.  There emotions, there are physical actions, and there are circumstances in life that can only be understand or undertaken when you actually parent a child.  I think that is a realization that many people have had once they become parents, or many Christians at least.  Likewise, and I hadn’t thought about this really, until this morning, are there some emotions and circumstances that you really can’t understand about God unless you have experienced a position of leadership, as well as the position of a follower?

Starting with the latter, it is easy as a follower to shirk responsibility, ultimate responsibility, and it is easy to point fingers and to say “I would do this differently” or “I can’t believe he/she leader did that”, etc...in other words it is very easy to do the ‘arm-chair’ quarterbacking thing.  But look at how Jesus followed when He came to the earth.  God led from Heaven for a couple thousand years, then Jesus led from the back when He came to earth.  Jesus created a new leadership paradigm in a sense...leading from the pack, leading from the position of a follower; He led by example, by humility, and He did it beautifully.  And He never leveraged authority for His own benefit.  In a similar fashion, the teacher here in today’s reading it is describing how we should follow, and he goes on to describe how the burden the king, the leader, experiences.

Which leads us to the second experience we can use in life to understand God, which is a position of leadership.  For me, one easy way to think about leadership is with the word ‘burden’.  When I am in a position of leadership, I feel the weight of responsibility, the weight of expectations, the weight of the ultimate results.  That’s can be a heavy burden.  Here, the teacher is telling us that leaders also experience first hand the disappointment of being accountable for the results and yet unable to ultimately control the outcome.  That is a unique burden of leadership.

For me, today’s 9 verses remind me to think about God and to experience God through the lens of leading and following - ultimately asking this question, “How can I experience and understand God better, or Jesus better, through my experience in this situation as a leader or as a follower?”

Interesting idea.