October 13, 2010 – Ecclesiastes 7

There are a lot of little tidbits of wisdom through this chapter and it reads like the book of Proverbs, but nothing really inspired anything in me until the last line.  Behold, only this have I found out: God made mankind straight, but men have had recourse to many calculations.  I thought that was a great line.  God’s path is straight.  All the deviations are ours.  Sometimes we find it so difficult to figure out why something happens or figure out how we need to get on the right track.  We are the ones who have complicated things.  Stay on God’s path and you walk a straight line.  What could be easier than that.  Yet we try and find our own way and leave the path and in so doing make it more complicated than it has to be. 

It also goes along with the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.  When we are on the path God has made for us, that is when we are closest to Him.  When we leave that path, it is no longer a straight line until we get back on it.  If we are not on the path, our distance to Him increases.  The further we move away, the further our distance from Him, the more complicated it can be to get back.  Think of those fidelity commercials and the green path that they lay out for their clients.  I particularly like the one where the guy leaves the office and immediately walks by a sports car dealer and is looking at them.  The agent says “stay on the path”, and he continues on.  We are told the same thing when dealing with God.  Don’t stray from the path because it is hard to get back on.  There are no short cuts, if you leave the path thinking you have found one, you are only getting more lost and confused.