Nothing New Under the Sun
“There is nothing new under the sun,” says the writer of Ecclesiastes. Clearly, he never had to update the software on his phone while waiting in the Walmart pickup lot.
Surely the Internet has changed everything. We order groceries from the couch, clothes from the kitchen table, and things we did not know we needed while brushing our teeth. By the time a package arrives, I sometimes have to open it to find out what I bought.
But perhaps the writer of Ecclesiastes knew more about us than we think.
A century or so ago, you went to the general store and told the clerk what you needed. The clerk gathered your order from the shelves. In some places, the store even delivered it to your home. If you wanted something special from the Sears catalog, you ordered it and waited. And waited. The catalog was full of wonders, but “arriving tomorrow” was not one of them.
Then came the shopping cart. Store owners wondered whether customers would really fetch their own groceries. They did. Soon we were pushing carts down aisles, filling them ourselves, and choosing among forty-seven kinds of breakfast cereal. Progress had arrived, though nobody had warned us we would eventually have to steer a cart with one bad wheel.
Now we tap a screen, tell someone else what we need, and wait for that person to gather it from the shelves. They may even deliver it to our home. Or we park at Walmart, check in on our phones, and wait for the groceries to appear. We have used astonishing technology to return to telling the clerk what we want.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Of course, Ecclesiastes was saying something deeper than “the general store will make a comeback.” Human life has a way of circling around the same needs. We find new ways to shop, work, and communicate, but we still know disappointment. We still make mistakes. We still lie awake worrying about someone we love. We still long for peace when the day has worn us thin.
Maybe you need a second chance. Maybe life has been so crowded with responsibilities that joy has quietly slipped out the back door. Maybe you are carrying a regret you cannot undo, or you have managed to look fine in public while feeling anything but fine at home.
For those needs, I have one word: Jesus.
Not because speaking his name makes every problem disappear by Thursday. It doesn’t. Jesus offers something better than a quick fix. He meets people who have failed and calls them forward. He welcomes the weary. He gives forgiveness where shame has settled in, and hope where we thought nothing could grow again.
The shopping cart may keep changing. The human heart still needs grace. And the good news of Jesus is that grace is available to you, right where you are—even if right where you are happens to be the Walmart pickup lot.
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