Chapter 11

2021 - This chapter is titled Cast  your bread upon the waters.  The first four verses are prose format, then we go back to block through the end of the book.

Here are the four prose verses:

[Ecc 11:1 ESV] Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days.

[Ecc 11:2 ESV] Give a portion to seven, or even to eight, for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.

[Ecc 11:3 ESV] If the clouds are full of rain, they empty themselves on the earth, and if a tree falls to the south or to the north, in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.

[Ecc 11:4 ESV] He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

So how do you "maintain" in an unpredictable world?  First, be generous and kind.  Do for others, and they will, at some future time, do something for you. Share  your knowledge and insight, and perhaps they will do the same for you.  Vs 2 seems to be about diversified investing.  I suspect it is saying get into 7 or so industries.  Because you do not know which ones will prosper and grow and which ones will be displaced and just fade away.  Be in many things, unrelated to each other.  Vs 3 - the natural world is going to do what it does and there is no changing that part.  Don't bet against the rain, don't go long on next years harvest?  Perhaps vs 4 goes with it also.  If you are waiting for the perfect opportunity but your work is outside, you will never get there.  Natural things are never perfect.  Always reason to wait, always reason to go.  Don't be so OCD about it that you end up paralyzed.  I am probably oversimplifying, because I am simple, but this sure seems to be what Solomon is saying.

Before, all I got out of this book was that life is unpredictable and so you need to pull into the moment and just try and enjoy that.  But this time, especially in these last few chapters, there is advice for living a good life.  There are guidelines, sideboards.  You don't know, so take your best shot...but shoot.  If you work with a hammer, you're going to hit your thumb.  If you don't do a cost estimate, you may run out of money and not finish the project.  So you look ahead, but only so far as you can really see.  Not 100 years.  Not 50 years.  What can you see in 20?  You'd have to be good to even see that.  Was Elon Musk even a blip on the radar 20 years ago?  You get the idea.  There is much to think about here in Ecclesiastes.

2021 - Surely this verse confirms the above paragraph: [Ecc 11:6 ESV] In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.  Do as much as you can, as diversified as you can.  Nothing may work, or all of it may work.

Do what needs doing.  Work.  Because things are not in your control, you don't know what the future holds.  So do your work and fear God, and don't waste time predicting and fretting.

10 ... youth and the dawn of life are vanity. [Ecc 11:10 ESV]

Enjoy youth though, and strength, but remember you will be judged for your choices.