Switching back over to Proverbs, to get back into a more positive state of mind (haha), we again see a chapter littered with ideas, one-liners, advise...we could go verse by verse for days.  But, in light of the reading we are doing in Ecclesiastes, I want to focus on 2 verses that really jumped out at me.

Verse 21:

Many are the plans in the mind of a man,

but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

and Verse 23:

The fear of the Lord leads to life,

and whoever has it rests satisfied;

he will not be visited by harm.

In thinking about these 2 verses, starting in  21, and in combination with our reading of Ecclesiastes, something really seems to be clear between the two texts - we are burdened with the desire to create progress and to understand our purpose in life, and we’ll construct ways to get at that - career paths, ideal family structures that fit to our own image of what we would deem ‘successful’, friendships and associations, etc...we can go about building our lives in a manner that we see fit, or we can lean into the plan that God has for us.  When we go our own way, we feel in control, we feel powerful, we feel secure at times, but then we face shocks in life where we are reminded that we aren’t and never were in control; we realize that it is God’s plan that ultimately is coming to fruition.  If we are wise, we come to understand that our best best is to lean into that plan, not our own; to find ourselves in His plan.  And that’s why verse 23 promises hope...that fear of the Lord, a deep respect for the fact that God IS in control, that God IS working His own plan in our lives and others, leads to a satisfying life...because that is the truth.  Fear of the Lord is life lived in reality.  And, I don’t know that the author really means that we’ll never suffer any harm if we living according to God’s plan, I like to think He is saying that the hard times in life are felt and experienced with a purpose in mind, and that it is that understanding of purpose for which we all are desirous that really fuels us to get through what would otherwise be really hard times.  When there is purpose in pain, the pain is usually far less about the pain and far more about the growth and the progress.

It is great to see how Ecclesiastes and Proverbs read back-to-back like this can get at opposite sides of some of the same ideas.