Gifts

Five Gifts

Five times Ecclesiastes stops and says there is nothing better. Each time it names something ordinary: a meal with friends, a good day’s work, the person you love, what you own, and the choice to rejoice. These are the five gifts. Each one is a way to play, and none of them waits for better circumstances.

Friends in chairs around a backyard fire with mugs in their hands; one man, still in his work shirt, has loosened a red tie.

Feast with Friends

Ecc 9:7

We gather not because life is certain but because it is not. Presence matters more than polish, and soup will do. Every feast is a protest against despair.

Four people in a waiting room playing cards around an open red pizza box.

Two men carrying a wooden dresser up a flight of steps, a red strap around it.

Do Some Good

Ecc 9:10

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might. We work not to secure our worth but to join God in what he is still making, and the joy is in the doing.

A woman carrying a red bag of groceries up the front steps of a house, the car trunk open behind her with more bags inside.

A couple on a couch on a weeknight, his arm around her, the television off and a red phone face down on the table.

III

Enjoy Your Partner

Ecc 9:9

The verb is enjoy. Love is not meant to be managed, and you cannot enjoy someone you have stopped seeing. Play keeps wonder alive where responsibility hardens.

A couple walking and laughing toward an elevator in a parking garage, her red phone going into her pocket.

Four people at a table in the middle of a meal, with one more place set and a red plate waiting at it.

Share Your Stuff

Ecc 5:19

Everything you own will one day belong to someone else. That can make you afraid, or it can set you free. Life is better when it circulates. Open the good bottle.

A spare bedroom made up for a guest, with a red basket of gifts on the rug by the bed.

A man in a coat stepping through a puddle in the rain, smiling, his red umbrella closed in his hand.

Opt for Joy

Ecc 8:15

Joy is not a feeling you wait for. It is a way of moving forward while the fog remains, and it can sit on a couch with grief. Judge it by the decade, not the day.

A woman home from work stepping into a child's bedroom, her bag and jacket dropped in the hall with red keys beside them, the girl smiling up from bed.

Feast. Work. Love. Give. Rejoice.

The five gifts, one word each. When everything else is gone, the bread is still bread and the table is still set, and eternity gets tasted there.

Next: the ten forces