Eat, Drink, and Be Especially Joyful: Thirty-One Meditations on Eccelesiastes

By Richard H. Hagerman

The teacher in Ecclesiastes first offers a pessimistic attitude toward life. Good people as well as bad people die. The world is inscrutable and futile. Some scholars say the teacher believes there is more to learn at a funeral than at a party.

If you are fully awake to lifenot hiding behind fear or the fantasy of easy optimismyou will find another attitude from a trustworthy teacher who has looked directly at the charring anomalies of life and has still found fertile springs that can outlast the heat of the sun.

Richard Hagerman stirs the research of that wisest man in the Old Testament into the promises of the New Testament Savior, Jesus Christ, and makes them a palatable elixir of life.

May Eat, Drink, and Be Especially Joyful help you find the Christ who will always be the gift by which men and women of all genetic backgrounds can eat, drink, and be especially joyful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462405718

Richard H. Hagerman

Richard H. Hagerman has served as a Sunday school teacher to all ages (kindergarten through adult), church elder, Presbytery moderator, General Assembly delegate, and pulpit supply.  He has written for Guideposts, Daily Guideposts, Smithsonian magazine, Saturday Evening Post, two men’s devotional books, Time Out and Take Five, three devotional magazines, These Days, The Upper Room, and The Quiet Hour, and many Christian publications including Decision magazine, Power for Living, Evangel, Hi-Call, and Starlight. His book Phebe, Courier for Paul was published in 2008.  Hagerman helped build a library building for the Sierra Leone Bible College in Sierra Leone, Africa. He retired after thirty-eight years of dental practice and lives with his wife, Dorothy, in Wendell, Idaho.

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Copyright © 1994 & 2013 Richard H. Hagerman.

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Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0570-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0571-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013905367

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 3/21/2013

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One - Ecclesiastes 1:1–11:6

1    Christ Makes the World Meaningful

2    An Answer to Our Problems

3    Pleasure is Serving

4    A Better Decision

5    Pitch Out Pessimism

6    The Time for Happiness

7    There is Judgment

8    Comfort in Oppression

9    Envy is the Pits

10  Love in My Family

11  Jesus Helps Me Up

12  Better Than New Year’s Resolutions

13  Wealth is a Poor Idol

14  Joy in a Toilsome Labor

15  Things are Insecure

16  Insatiable Hunger

17  Accept Jesus’ Salvation Now

18  Exposing My Faith

19  The Need for True Wisdom

20  God Comforts in Good and Bad Times

21  Do Not Put Down Others

22  Survival Requires a Guide

23  Getting Good Out of Bad

24  The Enigma of Life

25  Eat, Drink, and be Especially Joyful

26  Folly Destroys Wisdom and Honor

27  The Venture of Faith

Part Two - Ecclesiastes 11:7–12:14

28  Christ—Life’s Center

29  Believe Now!

30  Only One Thing is Needed

31  The Writer’s Conclusion

To Christ’s Resurrection,

my wife, Dot,

my daughters, Mary Lou, Christine, and Anne,

Dentistry,

and the out-of-doors,

God’s gifts of joy.

Foreword

At first glance, Ecclesiastes seems the forum for a chafing, old, melancholy cynic. Who else would repeat the word meaningless four times in his opening remarks! However, the author of this unusual book makes an unusual claim. He professes to be a teacher with an experiment that has taken him far beyond traditional classroom procedures and boundaries. He is simply writing up the lab report after a study of all that is done under heaven (Eccl. 1:13). Even the consideration, much less the completion, of such an experiment requires not a cynic, but one possessing unfiltered courage.

Under-the-sun living, as observed by the writer of Ecclesiastes, is a view of life without cliches or platitudes. The Teacher refuses to ease the scorching realities that occur in earthly life. He doggedly pursues every hope humanity has ever had for finding a little happiness in the desert. He exposes the usual mirages of wealth, power, and prestige, but he doesn’t stop there. He also explores the fragile nature