Monday 19 October 2020

Satisfying our appetite


Solomon certainly wants his readers to get his message, because he repeats himself (at length) on the same subject. Today his focus is more on 'satisfying our appetite', but he is not really speaking of food.

"Everyone’s toil is for their mouth, yet their appetite is never satisfied.
What advantage have the wise over fools?
What do the poor gain by knowing how to conduct themselves before others?
Better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite.
This too is meaningless, 
a chasing after the wind." - Ecclesiastes 6:7-9

I like the way he compares physical hunger with material desire and appetite. It makes me think that sometimes humans are merely consumers - we consume food, oxygen, drink, etc - but are we satisfied in the end?

His charge in verse 9 states: "better what the eye sees than the roving of the appetite." This initially seems a little confusing, but I found the New Living Translation much more clear, when it says:

"Enjoy what you have rather than desiring what you don’t have."

Charles Spurgeon wrote - "Let us not be too eager after the visible, but let us look to the invisible God.”

Living in Grace

D3LM3


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