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“The sun also rises…” – Solomon and Hemingway
Editor’s Note
This is a revision and expansion of a blog post I wrote and published March 2017. The title was “HARDSHIP: WHEN THINGS DON’T LOOK GOOD, LOOK HARDER.” You can review it here.
I love the title of the Ernest Hemingway classic The Sun Also Rises, which I borrowed here. It is taken from the Bible. Hemingway borrowed it from Solomon’s writing.
5 The sun also rises, and the sun goes down, And hastens to the place where it arose.
6 The wind goes toward the south, And turns around to the north; The wind whirls about continually, And comes again on its circuit.
7 All the rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not full; To the place from which the rivers come, There they return again.
8 All things are full of labor; Man cannot express it. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, Nor the ear filled with hearing.
9 That which has been is what will be, That which is done is what will be done, And there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which it may be said, “See, this is new”? It has already been in ancient times before us.
11 There is no remembrance of former things, Nor will there be any remembrance of things that are to come By those who will come after.
Ecclesiastes 1:5-11
There is, I admit, a certain melancholy in Solomon’s observations. It is a the more things change, the more they stay the same take. It includes the notion that life is a series of monotonous repetitions coupled with the idea that what we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.
Ecclesiastes is unique among the sixty-six books of the bible in that it views life from under the sun. It is a very human viewpoint and has to be understood in that light.
Which of us has not taken such a view or felt that twinge of despair?
In my first stab at this subject, I took a different tact and tone than I will in this one. As much as the line the sun also rises can be expressed in despair or disillusion, it can also be an encouragement. No matter how dark or long the night, no matter how uncertain the immediate outcome of an experience, no matter how chaotic the world may seem, the sun also rises. There is a certainty, an order woven into God’s creation.
That is comforting.
Digging through the Hemingway book, which I first read a long time ago and recently rediscovered, I found some quotes upon which to hang a few observations.
Hardship tests dogma.
“It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.”
Doesn’t perspective change with circumstance? Faith is easy on the mountain where it is least needed and difficult in the valley where it is needed most. God has plenty of what American patriot Thomas Paine called summer soldiers and sunshine patriots. There are more than enough people thumping their chest about their staunch beliefs and deep faith when things are going their way. But when the worm turns, what then?
I love the late, great evangelist B.R. Lakin’s admonition: Never doubt in the dark what you have believed in the light. Just because you cannot see Him doesn’t mean He isn’t there. Just because you cannot make sense of a thing doesn’t mean there is no divine purpose or plan.
Can you trust when you don’t understand?
“I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it. Maybe if you found out how to live in it you learned from that what is was all about.”
This reminds me of the preacher with cerebral palsy, David Ring, and his sermon, “Don’t say why, say what.” His premise was that we are not always meant to know the why of things, but we are meant to find out what it is we ought to be doing, what it is God expects of us.
“God, I don’t have to know what this is all about. Just tell me how to live in it. Show me what You want me to do.”
That is a pretty simple prayer, I think, and a good one.
Get busy living. You aren’t dead yet.
“I can’t stand to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.”
This one hits me like a ton of briquettes. Plowing through my fifties like Sherman through Atlanta, I cannot help but wonder how much of my life I forgot to live or failed to live because I was waiting for some other part of my life I dreamed might one day be.
This takes me back to the all-time classic movie Shawshank Redemption and a quote from Tim Robbins character Andy Dufresne and repeated several times by Morgan Freeman’s Red Redding.
Get busy living or get busy dying.
Whatever your circumstance. Whether you are there unjustly, like Dufresne or justly, like Redding, you have to decide to live in it or shrivel up and die in it. Self-pity is a death sentence for the living. You cannot; however, imprison or defeat the spirit of the person who, like the Apostle Paul, can say, I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content (Philippians 4:11).
“I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content”
The sun goes down. Night falls. Darkness ensues. It can be overwhelming and disorienting, to say the least. Life can feel like a senseless series of unfortunate events. However, even in the most melancholy book in the bible – the one written from the human viewpoint “under the sun” – Solomon draws this conclusion at its end:
11 The words of the wise are like cattle prods ”painful but helpful. Their collected sayings are like a nail-studded stick with which a shepherd drives the sheep.
12 But, my child, let me give you some further advice: Be careful, for writing books is endless, and much study wears you out.
13 That’s the whole story. Here now is my final conclusion: Fear God and obey his commands, for this is everyone’s duty.
14 God will judge us for everything we do, including every secret thing, whether good or bad.
Ecclesiastes 12:11-14
In other words, Solomon concludes:
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Everyone has something to say about everything. Don’t believe all of it.
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Having to understand why on everything in your life or in the world can wear you down.
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Regardless your circumstance, your relationship with God retains a two-fold requirement: trust and obey.
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God’s got this.
The sun also rises.
