Joy and Wisdom

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Kirsten Holmberg and I titled our reading, Joy and Wisdom. Sweetly fragrant cherry tree blossoms flood Japan with exquisite pale and vibrant pinks every spring, delighting the senses of residents and tourists alike. The lived nature of the blossoms cultivates a keen awareness in the Japanese to savor the beauty and scent while they linger. The very brevity of the experience heightens the poignancy of it.

They call this deliberate enjoyment of something that will change quickly, mono no oari. As humans, it's understandable that we'd want to seek and prolong feelings of joy. Yet the reality that life is riddled with hardship means that we must cultivate the ability to view both pain and pleasure through a lens of faith in a loving God.

We needn't be overly pessimistic, nor should we fashion ourselves an unrealistically sunny outlook on life. The book of Ecclesiastes offers a helpful model for us. Though this book is sometimes thought to be a catalog of negative statements, the same King Solomon who wrote that everything is meaningless also encouraged his readers to find joy in the simple things in life, saying there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Joy comes when we ask God to help us know wisdom and learn to observe all that God has done in both beautiful seasons and in difficult ones, knowing that neither is permanent on this side of heaven.

Today's Our Daily Read devotional scripture reading is from Ecclesiastes chapter 8 verses 14 through 17. There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth. The righteous who get what the wicked deserve and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve.

This too I say is meaningless. So I commend the enjoyment of life because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany them in their toil all the days of the life God has given them under the sun.

When I applied my mind to know wisdom and to observe the labor that is done on earth, people getting no sleep day or night, then I saw all that God has done. No one can comprehend what goes on under the sun. Despite all their efforts to search it out, no one can discover its meaning.

Even if the wise claim they know, they cannot really comprehend it. Let's pray. Dear Father, thank you for being the source of all the beauty and joy we experience in our life. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Kirsten Holmberg and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.