An Impossibly Vast Bell

One of the last songs Johnny Cash ever recorded in his life was called “The Wanderer.” It was a song written by U2, and it’s the only one they recorded that does not feature a band member as the lead singer. Once the song was written, the band agreed to seek out a voice that would properly capture the perspective of the song: that of the writer of Ecclesiastes, “The Preacher,” Qoheleth. They decided that Johnny Cash was the right pick.

Especially in his later years, Cash’s voice captures the troubador spirit of Ecclesiastes. What’s more, Johnny had certainly done his share of sampling prospective comforts in money, drugs, and women, among other things. Try these remedies as he might, he always came up empty. In fact, some of the ideas contained in Ecclesiastes are properly captured in Cash’s last music video and song, “Hurt.”

Ecclesiastes is tucked in just at the end of the poetry books. It’s my opinion that the book is a little bit poetry and a little bit wisdom literature. Scholars put it in the latter category, as it provides an outline of one man’s quest to find the meaning in life. His discovery is not as sweeping as one might hope — and yet it is settled in his mind, and he hopes, in the mind of the reader.

The word “vanity” recurs here, sometimes translated as “absurdity” or “meaninglessness.” The author tells us that in the usual places like work, knowledge, power, money, and pleasure, meaning is not to be found. Instead, the pursuit of these things only magnified their shortcomings as sources of meaning in our lives.

But as his perspective shifts over the course of the book, Qoheleth understands that even the fleeting things are sent from God. Put in their proper place—not as sources of meaning, but as gracious allowances from our Source—these present-day gifts may be beheld as a delight. We may enjoy them in the here and now, because they are gifts. Though they will pass away, the things of earth are present graces for the roads we walk.

Bobby Jamieson, from his book Everything is Never Enough:

If you hold that the nature of ultimate reality is impersonal and purposeless, you work hard not to think of such things while you try to construct meaning for your life. If you believe that there is no ultimate purpose, you must keep that thought at a safe distance from all the smaller, fragile purposes you are trying to cultivate. If you want a meaningful life, you must not let the universe’s meaninglessness ruin your party.

But if you believe that life is good because life is a gift, and life is a gift because God gives it, and life is full of good things because the creator is constantly flinging gifts at you faster than you can catch them, then any meaning you discover is catching up with the meaning that God has already built in. Any goodness you enjoy is scratching the surface of the goodness that life is. Any happiness you experience is a glimpse of the one who is happiness himself….The universe is one impossibly vast bell, struck by the hand that made it. The joy you feel in your best moments is a share of the joy of your maker.