Ecclesiastes – Look outward – Life is messy
Last week, as Solomon started to reexamine his observation that life under the sun, life apart from God was terribly monotonous, and therefore meaningless, he asked us to look in four different directions: upward, inward, forward, and outward. We are left with one direction in which to cast our gaze – outward. As he looks outward, the king sees that life is messy, but it is certainly not monotonous, and with God in the picture, definitely isn't meaningless. Solomon provides evidence for his conclusion in four different settings in Ecclesiastes 4: the courtroom (vv. 1-3), the marketplace (vv. 4-8), the highway (vv. 9-12), and the palace (vv. 13-16).