Ecclesiastes 9:11

Ecclesiastes 9:11

I. Life reigns in all the worlds, however powerful the hindrances to life at times may be. The real work of the world is not done by the swift or the strong, but by the multitudinous, universal push of humble, irrepressible life. Light and sunbeams, and rain and dews, call gently to the hidden life; and life, shy and tender, peeps forth at the call, and comes out conquering and irresistible, clothing with grass a thousand hills, making hill and plain alike to live. "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."

II. And is this truth less true in the world of men? That world also has its armies, its philosophies, its powers that shake and destroy, great to hear and great to see. But the violent passions, the famous outbreaks, the upheavals what do they do? They shatter the nations; they break in fragments, it may be, half a world; a fear comes on mankind, and many fall down and worship. But wait a little, wait, and all is still: and ruined homes, and graves, and barren lands are all that is left of the glory and the noise, till by degrees life comes back, now here, now there, a little tentative shoot, as it were, a stir, a movement; a delicate tendril of loving work revives; a patch begins to be cultivated; and by degrees a new creation rises, a subtle web of woven life veils and covers the rents, and ruins, and sharpnesses, and sorrows, and crimes that witness to destroying force, and life is lord of all again, for "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong."

III. This parable leads us step by step to Him the King of life, Christ Jesus. His life alone was the one only almightiness which by living and being sacrificed re-created a lost world. For "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." In the midst of conquering armies, imperial pomp, wealth, majesty, kings, and throngs of men, a little Infant in a manger is life. Life, conquering, supreme, Divine, was on earth as a Babe, as a Child, as a lonely Man. And we have a sure faith that nothing living, truly living, ever dies. We know in Christ that there is a life here which is of Christ and will not die.

E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons,vol. i., p. 138:

References: Ecclesiastes 9:11. R. Buchanan, Ecclesiastes: its Meaning and Lessons,p. 344; T. C. Finlayson, A Practical Exposition of Ecclesiastes,p. 213.