Bible Reading Plan
I have found Ecclesiastes to be very much a paradox and, quite frankly, discouraging. Two specific details provided by Fee & Stuart (How to Read the Bible Book by Book) have helped me through the daily readings: 1) as part of "Israel's Wisdom tradition," it is an attempt to explain the complexities of life to the next generation "...in order to teach the young how to live well before God"; and 2) the "teacher's" theology doesn't include anything about the resurrection; we know more about the future God has in store for us than Qohelet does.
If you'd like to study Ecclesiastes in more depth, I am going to recommend a new Bible study that was just released by Lifeway. It's an 8-session study called Life Under the Sun: The Unexpectedly Good News of Ecclesiastes by Hannah Anderson, who is a local author. In all transparency, I have NOT read through this study yet. However, having known Hannah personally for a dozen or more years, I trust her insight into God's word. She has a spiritual gift for applying the scriptures to real life. If you want to go further with Ecclesiastes, I have no doubt that this is a great introduction. I hope to get started on my copy soon.
By Sunday, we will be in the Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs). Here's a quick summary from Fee & Stuart:
"Song of Songs is a unique biblical book. Without mention of God and written in marvelous poetry, full of evocative and vivid images, it is a celebration of sexual love - and marital fidelity - between a woman and a man. ...[I]n its canonical form it is intended to be read as several episodes/scenes of one poem, thus a 'narrative' only in the sense that such poetry is trying to create a picture."
We'll explore this book in more detail next week. Happy reading!
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