“Everything is meaningless,” says the Teacher, “completely meaningless!”
What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north. Around and around it goes, blowing in circles. Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is never full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to the sea. Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.
History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. Sometimes people say, “Here is something new!” But actually it is old; nothing is ever truly new. We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.
These verses are from the Bible, the first book of Ecclesiastes. They were written by King Solomon, who was considered the wisest man of all times. The thing that strikes me about these verses is that history does repeat itself. And if we aren’t students of history, we won’t learn from the past. But how many of us are students of history? It amazes me… often, I will hear someone read a quote that sounds like it was written today and it turns out it was written a century ago. There is wisdom in these verses, even though they are rather depressing.
We can learn from the past by reading the Bible. It shows us a history over a large span of time. Generations upon generations. We see civilizations destroyed when they reach a place of moral decay. We see human beings that tend to forget God when the going gets good, or forget what God has done in the past for them when they are faced with new troubles. Most of all, we see God’s hand in all of history. He is large and in charge. And we would do well not to forget that. Have we, America? Have we, world?
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