Ecclesiastes 3:12-13

Ecclesiastes 3:12

Even in the days of his vanity, Solomon saw that there would be more happiness if there were less hankering. Are the cases not numberless where, for all purposes of enjoyment, labour is lost because coupled with the constant lust of farther acquirement, or because of a strange oblivion of his own felicity on the part of the favoured possessor?

I. One great source of our prevailing joylessness is our inadvertency. We need to meditate on our human happiness. There is for our meditation, daily, hourly, lifelong, God's chief mercy that largess of unprecedented love which is not the envied distinction of some far-off world, but is God's gift unspeakable to you, to me.

II. Another source of depression is distrustfulness. Let us rejoice in the present, and let us trust for the future. Let us pray and strive till our frame of mind is more in unison with the Lord's kindness; and in every gracious providence and in every spiritual mercy bestowed on ourselves or others dear to us let us recognise the merciful kindness of the Lord, and let us acknowledge what we recognise.

J. Hamilton, The Royal Preacher,p. 206.