Please read E1. Meaning to the Meaningless before reading any other reflections on Ecclesiastes
Ecclesiastes 1:12-18

According to verse 13, it is God’s fault. God placed a heavy burden on humanity. He created us with a desire to find meaning and purpose. We have a desire to make things better, and to create things that make a lasting difference. Then God played a dirty trick on us, He placed us on a defective earth.

The earth is broken and crooked. After all the things the teacher has seen, he does not believe man can fix the earth. He says humanity cannot straighten what is crooked. Our efforts to make things better are meaningless. The things the earth needs to be good were beyond counting. He does not elaborate, but it is not hard to think of what he had in mind. We need dependable weather, and predictable seasons. Instead, when we need rain, we get drought. We need security, storms wipe away all that we have built.

The more the teacher learned, the more hopeless he felt, so he also considered madness and folly. Perhaps it is possible to find contentment and meaning in playing the fool. This too was vanity since even fools know misery.

The writer knows that God exists; he refers to God almost 30 times. He always uses the Hebrew word Elohim. This name for God emphasizes his absolute sovereignty. This name speaks of a God that is in absolute control. He never uses the covenant name Yahweh (Jehovah in the King James) which is often translated “Lord”. He does not have a relationship with God. He views God as uncaring and distant. God has created the universe and placed humanity in it, and then he has walked away. All the sorrow and grief of the human experience is God’s fault.

Wisdom teaches us, “It is not always what you know, but who you know.” The writer did not know the Lord God; Christians do. Christians know Christ, and Christ is lord. That relationship makes all the difference; it fills our life with meaning.