Sufficient Self's Bible Study Group

[Woodland Woman]

I just finished Ecclesiastes 1 and I have to say......for a person who does not have salvation this must seem the most depressing book of the bible EVER WRITTEN. I read it first of course from my own perspective and thought eh I got Jesus, which made me think...well what if ya didn't? THEN I read it from a not saved perspective and wanted to cry for those who don't have Christ and the promise of something better. This chapter makes me very thankful for my ETERNAL salvation!! Without God in our lives it truly is just a humongous void of meaningless activities. Ya live, ya work your booty off, have a few laughs, slog through the rough spots alone, and then you die. What kind of life is that?!?!? You can chase the wind if ya want but it's still just air in the end and there is no control of it....just the same as it was when Solomon wrote this book. The meaningful quality of life comes only from the spirit. WHAT A REMINDER!!! Wonderful simplicity, gotta love it! Building up things of this life is futility at it's finest. Building up things of the spiritual nature is the only true way to "get ahead" on anything worth having. Our future is built on Christ. There is no other way to put it. I'm in a very appreciative mood today

Good insight Wannabe free!

 

[BarredBuff]

Jamie I love your idea! Sunday thru Wednesday then Thursday thru Saturday. Becaus I am about to got oschool and I doubt I'll be able to pull it out. So lets discuss Eclesiastes Chapter One until Saturday then we will do chapter 2.

WW- We will be doing NT mainly but FarmerJamie suggested it and it sounded good to me.

 

[tortoise]

Ecclesiates makes my head spin. On face value it appeals to my depressive suicidal side. I've never been able to see it otherwise.

 

[Wannabefree]

Ecclesiates makes my head spin. On face value it appeals to my depressive suicidal side. I've never been able to see it otherwise.

 

[BookWorm77]

This was a great chapter..(ecclesiastes 1)...it opened my eyes to some stuff. I get caught up sometimes in wanting to have more things. THINGS mean nothing. God and your spirituality means everything. Happiness has nothing to do with what you have in life, it has everything to do with the kind of person you are.
***btw everyone..great insight ..as usual

 

[BookWorm77]

And..ive also realized that if money is one of the most important things in someones life, they will be miserable

 

[Woodland Woman]

Ecclesiastes Chapter 1

This is want stands out to me the most right now: Verse 9

What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.

I think this speaks about the frustration of making the same mistakes over and over.
Yourself and the observation of mankind never learning from the past. I can get frustrated with myself and also seeing people continually making the same mistakes that keep them down. What is that saying? Those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Thankfully, the Bible is full of knowledge and hope.

Ecclesiastes is a strange book. It is also one of my favorites but I have to be in a certain mood to get the most out of it. When I feel like wallowing I get comfort in the fact that King Solomon felt a lot like I do sometimes.

 

[Wannabefree]

There is indeed a certain kindred spirit undertone to this book when you are down. Just to think how much he had in his lifetime, the great things he witnessed, the riches, the kingdom he inherited, then yet....he had many of the same feelings we do, and pointed out where the true richness in life comes from. I have a new found respect for Ecclesiastes as a tool to keep me grounded spiritually. I think I will enjoy reading it very much. I couldn't get beyond the depressive nature of the book before,and so have never spent much time reading it, but now I can see great benefit within the words. I got a new perspective!

 

[Shiloh Acres]

I certainly agree with slowing down. I have SO looked forward to participating, and I just haven't been able to. I know a lot of extra "busy-ness" is going on right now (not so much for me, holidays are pretty low key) but ... I've been off work for two weeks and I still can't keep up. I'll have to go back Monday, and I was afraid I could do no more than check in and read everyone else's insights from time to time. I'd love to be able to participate instead.

Anything y'all decide is fine with me, but I kind of like the idea of spreading whatever the "assignment" is out over a few days. That way if I'm just too busy here or there, I won't have to bow out completely. Also, sometimes if you TRY to do a few verses at a time, it just doesn't work since it often spills over into whatever else surrounds it.

Some chapters read more like stories, and you can pretty much fit all your insights for the chapter into a few paragraphs (not too many though) and others are so rich that you can spend days on a few verses, seems like. Rather than a hard and fast plan, it might be a good idea to be flexible, as the passages demand? Just a suggestion.

Now ... as far as Eccl. 1 is concerned ...

I don't have too much. Eccl is a book I tend to skirt around, often, in favor of others. It kind of depresses me too. I spend WAY more time focusing on Psalms and Proverbs than I do on Eccl or Song of Solomon, LOL.

It says to me what it says ... all is vanity, whatever you are chasing, it's all going to pass away, and you aren't going to accomplish anything that no one's accomplished before anyway, and what is done won't be remembered later (Why is that hard for me to "feel" as I'm sitting here watching my chickens and guineas scattered all over the yard pecking at stuff ... life seems pretty good???)

What appeals to me most about the chapter is v. 7 about the rivers going down to the sea and the water later returning to it's source. Along with the wind and the sun, I know the verse is saying that nature itself is also cyclic, and just does what it does ... even CREATION is vanity, I think. Not just man's work, but even natural processes. That wasn't what I meant to say, LOL. Ok, so that was new to me too. But ... what I DID mean to say, is that v. 7 appeals to me because it describes the water cycle, which man wasn't "supposed to know" thousands of years ago.

I think it just helps to put aside some of what I was taught "in another life" back when I was heavily invested in my education and secular humanism reigned supreme and mankind is getting better and better and rising from the pit of cave-man-ism that we came from. Personally I think the ancients were wiser than we give them credit for, and that mankind is probably DEgenerating, in a biological sense. And it's just one more of those passages where science and the Bible agree. I learned years ago that it wasn't necessary to bend my belief of the Bible in order to bow down to supposed scientific thought , but being trained in anthropology and biology made things difficult for me for a while. So that's what I personally like best about that chapter ... though it's not a very deep insight and not probably that important to most folks.

 

[Wannabefree]

Shiloh that was terrific insight!! You never know who you are speaking to on a public forum. Every thought, every word typed, may strike a chord with someone else. VERY IMPORTANT for us all to glean as much as possible from the scripture IMO. Different perspectives show the bigger picture Good point about the water cycle and what folks "weren't supposed to know" back then when this was written. Makes me think of the stone temple pilots, and wonder just what everyone has forgotten over the course of time. There is a reason for everything