Available Keynote Presentation

Is Everything Truly Meaningless? Ecclesiastes, Pain, and Life

Many strive to optimize their performance at work, family, and spirituality, but will this lead to success? Ecclesiastes would at first glance seem to indicate that the answer is no. A notoriously hard book to interpret and translate, this book seems at first glance to run counter to the message of most of the rest of the Bible (or, at the very least, our understanding of it). The result is that this book is rarely encountered in the songs, devotionals, sermons, or life verses of the North American church. 

This is a grave error. Ecclesiastes provides a necessary check to our individual and corporate egos a realistic view of reality, and a comfort to those who are struggle. Taken together with Proverbs and the book of Job, it allows us to see both the benefits and the limits to wisdom and success, recognize the limits of human understanding, and set proper expectations of this mortal life. 

Is life truly meaningless? Ecclesiastes never claims it is. Nor does it claim it is vanity. The answer it gives is a bit hazier, or perhaps smokier. The answer is hevel - a Hebrew word the meaning of which we will discuss. 

About Samuel Schmitt

Samuel Schmitt is key account manager at Southwest News Media where he helps businesses craft advertising campaigns to reach local readers. Samuel is a graduate of Crown College with a dual degree in Christian studies and communications where he studied ancient Hebrew. An avid reader of history, Samuel has traveled to Israel and the Palestinian territories to tour archeological digs and learn from Israeli scholars who helped him gain a better appreciation of the culture of the Old Testament.

That his obsession with the past is humored by his wife Lindsey is nothing short of a miracle, who is likely relieved that his frequent diatribes about long past events will soon have a fresh audience in their three sons, Leonidas, Menelaus, and Odysseus. When not working, reading, or keeping his three boys (all of whom are under three) alive, Samuel travels to shoot handgun and rifle competitions and serves as a reserve deputy in Carver county as well as an elder at the River Church in Chaska.