"24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind."
Ecclesiastes 2:24-26
Another statement by the Apostle is relevant in this connection. In 1 Timothy 6:17 he speaks of God as giving us ‘richly all things to enjoy’. There is no asceticism in God's dealings with His children. He wants us to enjoy the good gifts of His creation and providence - but the operative word there is 'enjoy' - we must not set too much store by them, or become preoccupied with them, and still less expect them to give to us what they were never designed or intended to give. The words of Adelaide Anne Proctor's lovely hymn (RCH 441) express this profound truth very beautifully:
My God, I thank Thee, who hast made the earth so bright, So full of splendour and of joy, beauty and light;
So many glorious things are here, noble and right.
I thank Thee, too, that Thou hast made joy to abound, So many gentle thoughts and deeds circling us round That in the darkest spot of earth some love is found.
I thank Thee more that all our joy is touched with pain, That shadows fall on brightest hours, that thorns remain, So that earth's bliss may be our guide, and not our chain.
For Thou, who knowest, Lord, how soon our weak heart clings Hast given us joys, tender and true, yet all with wings,
So that we see, gleaming on high, diviner things.
I thank Thee, Lord, that here our souls, though amply blest, Can never find, although they seek, a perfect rest,
Nor ever shall, until they lean on Jesus' breast.
Earth's bliss our guide and not our chain - joys, tender and true, yet all with wings - do not these words say it all? If God has set eternity (a 'forever') in our hearts (3:11), and invested us with immortality in our destiny as creatures of God, and yet paradoxically, we are finite creatures, it is this that explains why man is on a cleft stick, impaled upon this eternal paradox, and unable to find rest till he finds rest in God.