Ecclesiastes 4:1– So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.
It is a beautiful day today. There is a beautiful blue sky, fluffy white clouds, a golden sun. Yet I was reminded, as I had my time alone with God this morning that, in all corners of the world, wicked things are happening. There are oppressors with power, and oppressed people without a comforter.
On that day, more than two thousand years ago, when judges and people conspired to murder the holiest of men, it seems the sky was not blue and for a time the sun forgot to shine. The sun turned away from the sight, but there were oppressors with power, and an oppressed man who, at the end, cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me” when for a moment His last comfort failed.
As I thought on this less than cheerful topic, another passage from Ecclesiastes came to my mind:
Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them; while the sun, or the light, or the moon, or the stars, be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain: in the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened, (Ecclesiastes 12:1-3)
I know that the passage speaks about a man’s decline into old age, but it reminded me too that kingdoms and empires decline and eventually fall. Jerusalem did not long survive the murder of Jesus, and Rome itself came to destruction like the Babylonian, Persian and Greek empires that went before it.
It is too easy, on Good Friday — especially on this Good Friday, to see the dark and miss the light. It is tempting to believe that the “principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world and spiritual wickedness in high places” have the upper hand, and that moral defeat at home and abandonment of our friends abroad is inevitable. Never believe it!
The empires that surround us slip, even now, from the heights of their power. They may rule under the sun — but God rules in heaven, and the last word is not yet spoken!