Ecclesiastes 11 opens with advice about how to deal with an uncertain future.  Prepare for success by using several different strategies that may pay off down the road.  Recognize that nothing can be done about disasters that already have occurred.  At the same time, don’t be so paralyzed by fear of disaster that you do nothing.  Don’t expect to understand what God has purposed.  Instead, control what you can control by working hard.  The chapter concludes with an encouragement to enjoy life while remembering that hard times, death, and judgment are coming.

Ecclesiastes 12 considers the inevitable end of life.  The first 8 verses describe the effects of aging and death in various poetic ways.  Because all of these things are inevitable, we should remember God now.  The final part of the chapter, and indeed of the book, describes the work of the Preacher.  He commends proverbs and wisdom while warning against excessive devotion to other kinds of study.  The summation of all wisdom is to fear God, obey Him, and remember His judgment.

Psalm 32 contrasts the experience of sinfulness and forgiveness.  It describes the forgiven man as blessed, then reverts to David’s personal experience.  When he refused to acknowledge his sin, he suffered, but God blessed him when he repented.  Because of that experience, he urges everyone to seek God so that He will protect them like He protects David.  Vs. 8-9 are spoken from God’s perspective, and they explain the necessity of His corrective discipline.  The final verses present the conclusion that the wicked will suffer, but the righteous will rejoice in God’s protection.

Psalm 33 praises God for His wonderful works.  It opens by calling His people to praise Him in song because of His righteous word and works.  Everyone should fear and honor Him because He is the Creator.  Even now, His work continues.  He defeats the plans of the enemies of Israel while prospering His people.  Against His will, no human strength or ability can be effective.  He always remembers those who serve Him, and He protects them.  Thus, we should hope in Him.

Psalm 34 expresses David’s rejoicing at escaping Abimelech.  Its first verses express David’s determination to praise God and call others to join him.  He wants to praise God because God rescued him, as God always rescues His people.  Even when young lions go hungry, God makes sure that the righteous want for nothing.  Anybody who wants to enjoy the blessings of the Lord must turn from evil and seek good.  He listens to their prayers while destroying the wicked.  Even when things don’t seem to be going well for them, God will still deliver and protect them.  Their enemies will be defeated, while everyone who trusts God will be justified.

Ecclesiastes 6 begins with a comparison of two apparently pitiable people:  a man who is greatly blessed by God, yet does not enjoy his blessings, and a stillborn child.  According to Solomon, the second is better.  Next, he points out that both toil and wisdom are ultimately meaningless, and that what we can see is better than what we desire.  The chapter concludes with more observations about the difficulty we have in comprehending human existence.

Ecclesiastes 7 opens with several observations about the importance of learning from sorrow and death.  Solomon next endorses wisdom and patience.  Don’t try to figure everything out, enjoy blessing, and learn from adversity.  He next explores both the dangers of wickedness and of (human) righteousness.  He endorses a balanced, wise perspective on life.  However, he acknowledges that even his wisdom is not enough to seek out the deep meaning of life.  He wraps up the chapter with a warning about being entrapped by women.

Ecclesiastes 8 first praises wisdom and its advantages.  Then, it encourages obedience to the king and patience waiting on proper procedure.  After all, we are powerless in the face of many other things as well.  Solomon next considers the fate of the hypocrite.  He points out that it ultimately will be well with the righteous, but not with the wicked, regardless of how things look now.  Nonetheless, he observes that on earth, sometimes people get what they don’t deserve, both for good and evil.  The proper response to this is to enjoy the good things that we are given, while not wearying ourselves trying to figure out the ultimate purposes of God.

Ecclesiastes 9 points out that no matter who we are, no matter what we’ve done, the same thing happens to all of us:  we die.  There are two appropriate responses to this:  first, enjoy prosperity and your life with your spouse.  Second, do the best you can in the time you have been given, because the day is coming when you won’t be able to do anything.  Looming over all our efforts, though, is chance.  The best at anything still can be betrayed by bad luck.  In the final portion of the chapter, Solomon relates a story about a poor man who saved a city but was forgotten.  Nonetheless, it’s still better to be poor, wise, and forgotten than a ruler who is loud, obnoxious, and possibly even sinful.

Ecclesiastes 10 advocates wisdom and patience.  Those who are impulsive and foolish will be destroyed by it.  Sometimes, though, the undeserving are elevated and the deserving abased.  Trouble comes along with every work we do, but wisdom can alleviate (though not eliminate) the problem.  The fool makes his own life miserable in any number of ways.  Finally, a land benefits from wise rulers and is destroyed by foolish ones.  All the same, don’t curse the king, even in private.  You’ll get found out!

Ecclesiastes 1 begins with Solomon reflecting on the meaninglessness of life.  “All is vanity,” he says.  It’s pointless.  Meaningless.  People are born; people die.  Weather patterns shift around.  Nobody does anything new, and nothing changes. 

Solomon decided to use his wisdom to try to find meaning in this meaningless landscape.  However, he failed.  The work of mankind is irredeemably flawed.  Nor is there any consolation even in the use of wisdom.  All wisdom does is to increase frustration and unhappiness.

Ecclesiastes 2 recounts Solomon’s systematic examination of everything that people do to try to find happiness.  However, he found that all the pleasures of humankind are ultimately pointless too.  His possessions became so great that he was wealthier than any of the kings who had come before him.  It didn’t matter.  All of it was still meaningless.

After this, Solomon examined wisdom.  Generally, it’s better to have understanding about life.  However, whether we are wise or foolish, we’re all going to die anyway.  Wisdom provides no lasting earthly benefit.

Additionally, there’s no point to accumulating riches for your heirs.  They may well be idiots who will waste everything you worked for, leaving your labor meaningless.  Instead, Solomon says it’s better to enjoy what you have now and accept it as the gift of God.

Ecclesiastes 3 begins with the famous “For everything there is a season” section, which The Byrds turned into a Vietnam-War protest song.  Contextually, though, this poem is disappointing rather than reassuring.  Back and forth, back and forth it goes, without any real change or resolution. 

We all have our work to do under the sun, but understanding it is beyond us.  God gives us things to enjoy, but we should never think that we can comprehend his will.  However, it is reassuring to remember the work of God when we see earthly injustice.  He will punish the wicked eventually.  Conversely, as far as we can tell, we are no better off than animals when we die. 

Ecclesiastes 4 begins with another examination of injustice.  Solomon says it’s better not to live at all than to see the oppression that exists on earth.  For those who are alive, though, they ought to be aware both of the perils of laziness and the perils of working too hard, whether to impress others or for some reason they can’t even define.  However, there are two things that make life better:  trusty companions to share it with, and a willingness to listen to advice.  In the end, though, even great success is not enough to make life meaningful.

Ecclesiastes 5 first admonishes us to be reverent when we come before God.  We need to listen a lot, talk little, and honor the promises that we have made to Him.  Social injustice should not be our concern.  Similarly, we shouldn’t get caught up in striving for more money, which won’t make us happy.  However, the lives of those who have been made poor by circumstance aren’t pleasant either.  What is best is for us to work, to savor the fruits of our labor, and to recognize that these things are the gift of God.

Some proverbs are easier for us to handle than others.  The grayer we get, the better we like Proverbs 16:31!  Others, though, should make us pause for some sober self-examination.  On this list, I would include Proverbs 18:2, which reads, “A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing his opinion.”

It’s very easy for us to make this proverb about somebody else.  There’s that know-it-all at work, that pompous bore on Facebook.  Don’t they ever listen to themselves?  Don’t they ever realize how clueless they sound?  Don’t they ever shut up?  Maybe we could figure out some discreet way of getting them to read this, and it would cure them!

Proverbs 18:2 is certainly strong medicine, but it’s supposed to be taken internally.  God doesn’t mean for us to go around labeling others based on how insufferable they are:  “They’re a fool, and they’re a fool, and they’re a fool, and. . .”  Instead, He wants us to consider whether we’re seeing a fool when we look in the mirror.

To paraphrase the webcomic xkcd, someone is always wrong, and not just on the Internet.  There are wrong people at work.  There are wrong people in our neighborhood.  There are wrong people at church.  We can tell that they’re wrong because they don’t agree with us.

All too often, we respond to people like that by sticking our fingers in our ears and telling them the Truth at top volume.  If we’re aren’t in the mood for confrontation, we check out of the conversation and count ceiling tiles while they blather on, secure in the knowledge that whatever they say, they will continue to be wrong.

Guess what doing that makes us.  It makes us fools.

Here’s the thing.  We might think they’re wrong, but they don’t think they are.  They have some reason for saying what they’re saying.  If we don’t want to end up on the wrong side of Proverbs 18:2, we need to give them an honest hearing.  Yes, I know it’s out of fashion to listen to people we don’t agree with, but we ought to try it anyway.

First, even people who are so absurdly, ridiculously wrong that they disagree with us still can tell when we aren’t paying attention to them.  They appreciate it when we hear them out respectfully, and they don’t appreciate it when we don’t listen.  It costs us nothing to be courteous, and courtesy is worth a great deal.

Second, the better we understand them, the better equipped we are to help them understand us.  We’re much more likely to be persuasive when we address their actual beliefs and arguments, rather than our pre-conceived caricature of those beliefs and arguments.  There is no substitute for hearing a position explained by someone who endorses it.

Finally, and I hesitate even to bring this up, it’s always possible that in some disagreement, our position might be the one that’s, um, not-right.  I know; I know—everyone who is reading this has got it all figured out.  But what if we don’t?  Hypothetically speaking, that insufferable, pompous bore on the other side may have a point, but if we don’t listen, we will never realize it.  I’d rather be embarrassed for a little while and right thereafter than wrong forever.

Fools want to be right.  The wise want to be wiser.  The path we go down is entirely up to us.

Psalm 27 expresses David’s confidence in God.  Because God is his light and salvation, he can be fearless.  He’s seen God defeat his past enemies, so he won’t be afraid of any future enemies, no matter how numerous they are.  He wants to spend his days glorifying God in His house because he knows that God always will protect him.  As he worships God now, he appeals to God to protect him even when his own family isn’t.  He asks God to bless him both with instruction and protection, and he is certain that he will see God’s goodness before he dies.

Psalm 28 is another one of David’s appeals to God for help.  David claims that if God won’t help him, he might as well be dead, so he is pleading with God to answer him.  He doesn’t want God to punish him as God punishes the wicked.  He expects, in fact, that God is going to reward the wicked according to their wickedness so that they will be permanently destroyed.  The psalm concludes with rejoicing in God’s answer to prayer.  God has protected David, and He will continue to protect His people.

Psalm 29 begins by calling on the inhabitants of heaven to give God the glory He deserves.  In particular, David focuses on God’s majesty as revealed in the volume and power of thunder.  The thunder the psalm describes is so powerful that it smashes trees and makes the ground shake.  The animals are frightened, the leaves fall off the trees, and God’s people worship Him because of the display of His power.  He is King even over the mighty storms, and with His strength, He can grant peace and strength to His own.

Psalm 30 has an ascription that says it was used at the dedication of the temple.  It looks back on the way that God has saved David from his enemies.  David then encourages the people to praise and thank God because even if they suffer for a little while, the future will surely be better. 

David had made the mistake of trusting in himself, but when God withdrew His favor, he realized it was all really due to God.  In that time, he pleaded with God to save him because dead worshipers don’t give God any glory.  God responded and delivered him, so now he is going to praise God forever.

Psalm 31 was also written during a difficult time in David’s life.  David begins by asking God to rescue him.  God is his only hope, a thought he expresses with the words, “Into Your hands I commit my spirit,” words Jesus later uses on the cross.  David hates wickedness and trusts God because he has seen that God is trustworthy.  Nonetheless, he is currently suffering greatly, and all of his neighbors look down on him and plot against him.  Despite this, David continues to trust in God, and he calls on God for deliverance.  God’s goodness is so great that He always rescues His own.  The psalm concludes with rejoicing that God has delivered David, and it calls on all of God’s people to likewise trust in Him.