15 “All things have I seen in the days of my vanity: there is a just man that perisheth in his righteousness, and there is a wicked man that prolongeth his life in his wickedness.”
 |
| Glass Half Full or Half Empty?? |
Solomon, although he was given wisdom, did not always draw the right conclusions to what he was seeing. He had the gift of wisdom and with that gift he could draw back the curtain of life and understand how things worked; many times though, he interpreted what he was seeing in strictly a negative light and so his conclusions can, at times, be wrong. Consider the premise he is building this statement on in this verse? “…the days of my vanity…” this is horrible foundation to build a statement upon; in other words he is saying “This is what I have seen all the days of my vain life…”. Also, he says: “The just perish and the wicked live long”; this negative statement actually draws attention to nothing significant because long life, while it is a good thing, is not the real measure of life. How one lives that life is surely the measure.
Here is an example where he failed to realize that it is better to live a short but righteous life than to live a long time in unrighteousness. Even though he was able to observe things through his gift of wisdom he interpreted it with a depressed heart, therefore, he drew the wrong conclusions. His gift was corrupted through a life of vice. Solomon became depressed because in wisdom he knew how to live but knowing how to live does not give one the power to live that life, he was depressed because daily he was confronted with how out of order his life was. To know what is right and yet not have the power to live it destroyed his testimony. We too must be careful about the conclusions we draw on life, if our premise of life is negative then it is likely we will only see each event in our lives negatively. Negativity affects our every day life and is rooted in self pity; let’s find the grace for a good confession.
No comments:
Post a Comment