When you are tempted to believe that your Father is giving you nothing but stones and snakes in this world when you are asking for bread (Matt. 7:9–11), just remember that wisdom does not fear “why were the former days better than these” (Eccl. 7:10). Wisdom hopes in One who is in control (Prov. 9:10).
Change. Few of us like it; many of us fear it; most of us try to prevent it. And yet, change is all around us. We needn’t be mildly irritated, rocking on our front porch, vacantly musing, “When I was your age . . .” to recognize it. We click through the twenty-four-hour news cycle and frantically counsel our own hearts not to be troubled. We pause to chat with our neighbors next door who do not share a last name or the couple across the street whose first names are Jim and John, and we nervously wonder what is becoming of the nuclear family. Change is even in our very bones—we pass from one day to the next, remembering the “good ol’ days” when our bodies didn’t hurt quite as much, or at least when they were better able to do what our brains command. Change is everywhere. And whatever change it may be, part of us cries out, “This is not the way things ought to be!”
Ecclesiastes 7:10 puts these heart wrestlings to voice when Solomon instructs us not to ask, “Why were the former days better than these?” Here we see God identify our natural tendency when we observe change in the world, namely, that we are tempted to believe that the past was inherently better than the ominously looming tomorrow. But Solomon explains why such a question ought not quickly roll off our tongues: “For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”
Solomon’s father put it in a slightly different way when he observed in Psalm 11:3, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Do you feel the weight of David’s question? Can you identify with the same sentiment as you look around you, that the foundations are being destroyed? David uses imagery from his context to set the scene: “How can you say to my soul, ‘Flee like a bird to your mountain, for behold the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to the string?’ ” (vv. 1–2). We might situate the question in our modern setting by asking: “How can I comfort my heart when society is decaying at a breakneck pace? Where is my hope when evil seems predominant?”
