Everything Is New Under the Sun

If Qoheleth, writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, lived today, he would no doubt be diagnosed with clinical depression. He takes no pleasure in life, declaring, “The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.” He goes on to say, “Nothing is new under the sun.”

Qoheleth could not be more wrong. Because of our very existence, everything is new under the sun. My recent foray into nature photography has taught me this. Every time I take a breath and click a button to take a picture of a flower, something unfolds that has never existed before and will never exist again. If I took the picture 30 seconds earlier, an insect might be crawling on the flower’s stem. If I took it 30 seconds later, a breeze might be ruffling its petals. If someone other than me took the picture, he or she would frame it slightly differently. The alchemy of me and the flower and the moment is utterly new and not to be repeated. For this reason, every moment of our lives is holy and filled with potential because of the unique ways that we interact with God’s creation.

Qoheleth also laments, “There is no remembrance of the men of old; nor of those to come will there be any remembrance among those who come after them.” Pearl S. Buck has a response to Qoheleth: “Like Confucius of old, I am absorbed in the wonder of earth, and the life upon it, and I cannot think of heaven and the angels. I have enough for this life. If there is no other life, then this one has been enough to make it worth being born, myself a human being. With so profound a faith in the human heart and its power to grow toward the light, I find here reason and cause enough for hope and confidence in the future of mankind."

To which I would add that it does not matter if no humans remember us after we die, because we dwell forever, precious and beloved, in God’s eternal memory.