As I read this chapter I thought, “No guarantees.” There is no absolute formula for success or finding the ‘good life,’ especially when you define good life as a life filled with the things and stuff of this world. As the writer says, I have seen something else under the sun: The race is not to the swift or the battle to the strong, nor does food come to the wise or wealth to the brilliant or favor to the learned; but time and chance happen to them all (11).
I confess that I struggle with the word ‘chance’. I hear it connected to ‘fate’ or ‘luck’ as if some random force is at work. So I spent some time researching the word. Is that what it means? Not necessarily. The Expositors Bible Commentary writes this, the concept of chance in v.11 is not exactly the English usage. It contains less the idea of haphazard occurrence than an event that we meet, whether anticipated or unanticipated.
I might say it like this, ‘stuff happens.’ And stuff happens to all of us and we cannot plan for this stuff. We simply have to live into and through it.
And it is at this point that my faith in Jesus and the teachings of the NT kick in. For example, Romans 8:37-39: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I may not anticipate all things that come my way or even like all things that come my way. However, no matter what it is, great or horrible, it cannot separate me from Jesus’ love for me and so I cling to my Savior through thick and thin!
Halleluiah! Amen! Through think and thin, in good times and in bad, I cling to You, Jesus, my Savior! Halleluiah Amen!
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