Life is a Breath | Ecclesiastes 1:1-11
Brian Hedges | August 23, 2026
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to the book of Ecclesiastes. Ecclesiastes: it’s an Old Testament book, following Psalms and Proverbs. If you’re following along in one of the Bibles in the chairs in front of you, it’s page 553.
Holly and I, this last week, celebrated our thirtieth wedding anniversary. That evening we were talking and reflecting on how fast it has gone by. I just said, “Wow, what happened?”
She said, “Yeah, it feels like ten minutes—underwater.” She didn’t really say that. She’s too kind for that.
But we were reflecting on just how fast life goes by. And we’ve all experienced that. We have experienced the fleeting nature of this life.
Today we’re beginning a new series in this Old Testament book of wisdom, Ecclesiastes, that addresses that condition head-on. We’re calling this series Breathing Lessons: Wisdom from Ecclesiastes for This Fleeting Life. I think by the end of the message this morning, the title will become clear.
This is one of the Old Testament books of wisdom literature. It is a controversial book—controversial in many ways, not least of all, who wrote this book? Traditionally, the book has been attributed to King Solomon. That’s highly debated today. The opening words of the book, “The words of the preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” certainly gives the impression that Solomon may have authored this book, but Solomon himself is never named.
Instead, “These are the words of the Preacher”; in Hebrew, Qoheleth, or in Greek, Ecclesiastes, which is where we get the name of this book. That name, Qoheleth or Ecclesiastes, really carries the idea of a teacher, a preacher, a philosopher, a sage, someone who convenes an assembly in order to teach them.
The book is also controversial in its basic message. Is this a pessimistic book, as it describes life under the sun, or is it a basically positive book? Is this book written from the perspective of Eeyore or Tigger? Or is it somewhere in between?
Some of you, maybe, when you heard that we’re going to do Ecclesiastes, you thought, “Oh great, we’re going to be depressed for the next twelve weeks.” But I want to argue that this is a book that actually is encouraging to us. It’s a book that teaches us how to live wisely in this fleeting life which we live.
Today, we’re going to begin with the first paragraph in chapter 1. It’s Ecclesiastes 1:1-11. Hear now the words of God.
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Hevel havalim, says the Preacher,
hevel havalim! All is hevel.
What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.
All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
‘See, this is new’?
It has been already
in the ages before us.
There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.”
This is God’s word.
This passage confronts us with the fleeting nature of life in this world and the feelings of futility that result. And today I want us to see how Qoheleth helps us both face this reality and also joyfully receive life as God’s precious gift, which is, I think, the main message of this book.
I want us to look at three things this morning:
1. The Brevity of Life
2. The Cycle of Life
3. The Gift of Life
1. The Brevity of Life
First of all, the brevity of life. Once again, verses 1-2:
“The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Hevel havalim, says the Preacher,
hevel havalim! All is hevel.”
I’m sure you noticed that I transliterated those words instead of reading it from the English translation. Why did I do that? I’m not just trying to be clever. I want to make the point that the interpretation of those words, traditionally rendered “vanity of vanities, all is vanity,” the translation and interpretation of those words is crucial to understanding the message of this book.
There have been a number of suggested meanings of the word that include vanity or absurdity or empty or meaningless or futile. All those shades of meaning might be intended at certain points in the book, but the most basic meaning of this word is a very concrete image. It’s the image of breath—a vapor, a mist. It’s the idea of that which is transient or temporary or hard to grasp.
Consider the use of this word in a few other places. Job 7:16 says, “I loathe my life; I would not live forever. Leave me alone, for my days are a breath,” hevel.
Or Psalm 144:4: “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.” There are two images there, the image of breath and the image of a shadow. Both of them are communicating the same thing. It’s the transience of life, the temporary nature of life. Life is fleeting. Life is a breath.
Or James 4:14. Of course, this is not using the Hebrew word, but it evokes the image from Ecclesiastes and from the Psalms. “What is your life?” James says, “For you are a mist [or a vapor] that appears for a little time and then vanishes.”
Life is a breath. Life is a vapor. Life is something that is very temporary or transient.
I thought I’d just give us a little object lesson this morning. Life is something like this—a bubble. It’s kind of cool, isn’t it? A bubble. It’s brief. It’s transient. It’s hard to grasp. You can’t quite hold on to it.
It’s beautiful. Bubbles are cool! That was kind of fun. I picked that up at Walmart last night just for this today. I was blowing those in my car. They actually came out a lot bigger when I was practicing than they did just then.
But you get the point. Life is a bubble. Life is a breath, a vapor, a shadow. It’s beautiful, but it’s brief. That’s the point. You can’t grasp it. You can’t hold on to it. It is temporary, transitory.
We feel this, don’t we? There are so many beautiful moments in our lives. You reflect on an early childhood experience; it feels like yesterday, and yet it was so long ago. When you made your first best friend—when you first fell in love—the day you graduated high school—when you got your first real job—your wedding day—when your children were born—your first experience of loss. All of these things are these transitory, passing, fleeting moments; and our life is made up of moments just like that.
It’s here, then it’s gone. You can’t hold on to it. You can’t slow it down. You can’t grasp it. You can’t even quite understand it. But this is our experience.
The brevity of life. That’s what Ecclesiastes, Qoheleth, is facing in this book.
2. The Cycle of Life
What he considers in the verses that follow actually makes this land even harder. It punctuates the brevity of life as he considers the cycle of life (point number two). The cycle of life, verses 3-11.
He states the basic problem in verse 3. “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” There’s another phrase that appears again and again, thirteen times in Ecclesiastes: “Under the sun.”
Barry Webb says this is unique to Ecclesiastes; you don’t find that phrase anywhere else in the Old Testament. It establishes a certain perspective or angle of vision. Qoheleth is thinking about life under the sun, life from this angle of vision, as we live in this world. And he asks this question: “What does man gain by all the toil…?” The labor. It’s the great Old Testament word for our work life and our life on earth. It is labor, it is toil, because it’s life we live in a fallen world. Qoheleth here is evoking Genesis 3, the fall of the created world because of sin, where work is rendered as labor, where childbirth becomes labor, where man and woman (and all human generations from this time on) will live under the dark cloud of a cursed world. “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”
Then Qoheleth gives us a series of pictures that contrast the seeming permanence of the world with the transience of his own life.
“A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.”
Generations come and go, but the earth remains.
“The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place where it rises.
The wind blows to the south
and goes around to the north;
around and around goes the wind,
and on its circuits the wind returns.”
You just get this sense of the cycles of nature in this world. Verse 7:
“All streams run to the sea,
but the sea is not full;
to the place where the streams flow,
there they flow again.”
So here is the problem. This is the central problem: Life under the sun appears futile. The generations come, the generations go, but the world goes on.
A couple of years ago I read Ernest Hemingway’s book The Sun Also Rises. Of course, the title of the book is taken from Ecclesiastes. In fact, the book opens with two epigraphs, a statement from the author Gertrude Stein: “You are all a lost generation,” and then an extended quotation from Ecclesiastes 1.
The basic plot of the book is several post-World War I expats in Europe who are traveling around having lots of conversations, drinking a lot, getting drunk, chasing excitement, going to bullfights, but really arriving nowhere.
This was my Goodreads review of the book: “American expats getting drunk in Paris and Spain and bullfighting; the lost generation.” That’s the book. You don’t need to read it, unless you really like Hemingway.
But Hemingway was getting at something. He was getting at the experience of futility in this life under the sun. That’s what Qoheleth is facing here in the first chapter of his book.
The poignancy of this experience is then brought home in verses 8-11, and most of us will feel this shattering sense of heartbreak in our own lives, the reality of this crashing in upon us. Qoheleth expresses this in experience. Verse 8:
“All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.”
From history, verses 9-10:
“What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said,
‘See, this is new’?
It has been already
in the ages before us.”
And then, in verse 11, in our mortality:
“There is no remembrance of former things,
nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be
among those who come after.”
We die, and most of us, within a generation, are forgotten.
If we stopped here, the picture would be very bleak indeed. This passage reminded me of a scene from the play Les Misérables. There’s a scene where young revolutionaries have just been killed at the barricades. They were involved in this uprising, they were dreaming of revolution, of changing the world. They’ve now died; their deaths seem to count for nothing. And the women of Paris mourn their loss in a song that’s called “Turning.” And the song goes like this:
“Did you see them going off to fight,
Children of the barricade who didn’t last the night?
Did you see them lying where they died?
Someone used to cradle them and kiss them when they cried.
Fighting for a new world that would rise up like the sun.
Where’s that new world now the fighting’s done?
Turning, turning, turning through the years;
Minutes into hours, and hours into years.
Nothing changes; nothing ever can.
Round and round the roundabouts
And back where you began.”
It’s Ecclesiastes. That’s what he’s facing. He’s facing this experience of futility in the world, the experience of our mortality in this life under the sun. Qoheleth faces this head on, and he wants you to feel it. He wants you to feel it. The book of Ecclesiastes is meant to slow you down and make you think and make you experience the mortality of this life.
3. The Gift of Life
But it doesn’t stop there, because Qoheleth wants us to not only reckon with the brevity of life and the futility of this cycle of life, he also wants us to receive the gift of life. And that’s point number three, the gift of life.
This is why I don’t believe this book is ultimately pessimistic. I do not think that Qoheleth was a secularist with no belief in God or that this book is about despair. He was not a pessimist, he was a realist who counsels us with wisdom to take account of life’s transient, temporary nature; but also with the reality of God’s wisdom and of God’s grace. I want to show you this in just a couple of ways.
We’re going to jump ahead now to Ecclesiastes 2:24-25, which begins the conclusion of the first major section of this book. And in those verses, Qoheleth says, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.” Isn’t that interesting? He’s already talked about the sense of futility in toil, but now he says there’s nothing better than to find enjoyment in this toil. “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
The author here says that we should find enjoyment in this fleeting life, but that such joy is actually a gift from God. One of the commentaries I read observed that over and over again Ecclesiastes emphasizes God as the giver, God that gives. You have it in chapters 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, and 12. Again and again and again—God’s gift, how God has given life and the things of life to human beings. He gives us good things. These are the gifts of God.
Then there is a refrain of joy that runs through this book. This is the first refrain here in chapter 2, but these refrains escalate in intensity from recognition to commendation to command. So in chapter 8, he essentially commends the life of joy, and by the end of the book, he is telling us, “Rejoice in all of your days that God has given you.”
The point he is making is simply this: Our response to God as we live this fleeting life is to receive this life as God’s gift and rejoice in it.
More will be said, of course, as Qoheleth urges us to live in reverence of God. Remember the end of the book. In chapter 12, “The end of the matter, all has been heard: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” But reverence for God includes this gratitude and this joy for the life that he has given us.
Let me illustrate this from C.S. Lewis’ novel Paralandra. Paralandra is a science fiction novel. You don’t need to know a lot about the book to get this point. But it is about a character named Ransom who’s on another planet, and he’s encountering all different kinds of strange things on this planet—strange creatures, flora, and fauna, and so on.
There comes a place where he kind of walks through an orchard and there’s this strange but delicious fruit, and he eats the fruit. It’s the most delicious thing he’s ever tasted. Then there are these trees that grow bubbles—you can see a picture of the tree there on the left side of the cover—these trees that grow these bubbles, and when you stand under the tree the bubble bursts in a refreshing shower. And it’s the most refreshing thing that he has experienced.
He’s tempted to repeat it immediately. It feels so good he wants to repeat it immediately, but there’s some inner check in his heart that holds him back. He says, “Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity.” He said it would be like listening to the same symphony twice in one day. In other words, he has received this gift, but he must not try to seize it, to hold on to it, or to repeat it again and again.
That’s one of the basic lessons of the book, and it’s one of the basic lessons of Ecclesiastes. This life is full of good gifts from God that we are to receive with joy, but it’s a bubble. It’s a breath. It’s a mist. It’s a vapor. It’s brief. It’s fleeting. It’s passing. You can’t hold on to it. You can’t grasp it. You can’t fully understand it. All you can do is trust God and receive it, but hold things loosely.
Listen to Lewis’s words from his book The Problem of Pain, which make the same point now, not so much in a picture, but just straight-on exhortation. He says,
“The settled happiness and security which we all desire God withholds from us by the very nature of the world. But joy, pleasure, and merriment he has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God. [Now listen to this.] Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant ends, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.”
That’s the lesson of this book. Many good gifts—many good gifts—and they are to be gratefully received. In fact, we could put it this way; here is the first breathing lesson from Ecclesiastes: Receive life as God’s gift. Receive it. Celebrate those moments. Enjoy those good gifts that come to you day in, day out.
Do you ever just stop and pause and thank God for the refreshing taste of water after you’ve mowed the yard on a hot day? Savor those moments. Seriously, savor those moments. Every moment is a gift. It’s a gift.
Receive it, but don’t build your whole life on it. Don’t try to hold on to it. Don’t make the good gifts into idols. Don’t put the gifts above the divine giver. Let the gifts instead point you to God, and fear him, reverence him, love him, delight in him. Rejoice in him.
The gospel, of course, gives us an even deeper understanding of the nature of life in this world. I just want to end with this gospel perspective.
When the New Testament writers reflect on the power of the risen Christ and the hope of new creation, they reframe the futility of this world in the weariness of our toil. They reframe it. They use the same language, but they say more. I want you to listen to just two passages from the apostle Paul.
First of all, Romans 8:18-21. Paul says,
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility…”
There’s the key word, and he’s using there the same word that translates hevel in the Greek Old Testament.
“For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
The picture that the gospel gives us is not a picture of futility only but of futility plus hope, futility plus glory, the hope of glory because of Christ—because Christ has come, because he has died, and because he has risen again.
Barry Webb has shown that Paul takes Ecclesiastes’ theme of frustration and sets it in the new light of redemption. Creation is leading to new creation.
Listen to this passage from 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15 is Paul’s great, magnificent chapter on the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of the body, the future resurrection of believers. It’s all there in fifty-seven verses, one of Paul’s longest chapters, maybe his very longest chapter of all. And he ends the chapter with these stunning words, which are a reversal of Ecclesiastes 1:3 about the futility of toil. 1 Corinthians 15:58: “Therefore,” because of the resurrection of Christ, “Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” Your labor is not in vain.
The resurrection of Jesus means that our life is not just a life of toil and trouble. Life is not futile, though it is fleeting, but the resurrection of Jesus changes everything. It changes our perspective, and it helps us then to receive this fleeting life as a gift as we set our hope on the future life—eternal life, resurrection life—that will be ours when Jesus Christ returns.
So brothers and sisters, this week, enjoy your life. As one author put it, “Don’t waste your breath.” Enjoy your life. It’s a fleeting life. Enjoy your life, and especially rest your heart in God.
Let’s pray.
Gracious Lord, we thank you this morning for the gift of life that you have given us. We thank you that you have given us so many things, so many experiences, so many wonderful aspects of life. We acknowledge today that our life is a breath, that our life is a passing shadow. It’s a mist, a vapor. It’s here today, it’s gone tomorrow. And the fleeting nature of our lives reminds us that we are not to set our hopes on earthly things, but we are to set our hopes on Christ and on the reality of new creation in him, new life that has dawned in the resurrection. We thank you for that resurrection hope this morning.
We pray that you would help us live in that hope this week. And we pray, Lord, that you would help us to share that hope, that good news with others. Help us be mindful as we live each passing day. Help us live each day with gratitude and with joy. Help us receive it as the gift you’ve given to us, and help us set our hearts’ satisfaction in you.
As we come to the table this morning, may we be nourished, not only physically by the bread and by the juice, but may we be nourished spiritually as we feed our hearts and our minds on Christ and his finished work. And we ask you, Lord, to draw near to us in these moments. Meet us through your Holy Spirit and renew us at the table. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen.
