I claim my lifelong optimism as a result of seeing Disney's Pollyanna. Pollyanna's outlook just seemed to be right, at least it fit into the character of a Christian as I had been taught.
In my twenties, I found myself reading Ecclesiastes and hoping I would never turn into a sour old person. I just didn't have enough life experience to understand that "sourness" was wisdom.
At the age of 60something, I identify with the writer of Ecclesiastes. He's right. The things of this world are ephemeral, their joy does not last. I love the note on this verse in the NIV Study Bible,
God's beautiful but tantalizing world is too big for us, yet its satisfactions are too small. Since we are made for eternity, the things of time cannot fully and permanently satisfy.More and more I understand De Chardin, that I am a not a "human being having a spiritual experience but a spiritual being having a human experience." We all are.
I also find the verse written by a seeming curmudgeon to be very hopeful. God has set eternity in my heart. My longing for justice, for reconciliation, for truth are evidences of His life in mine. They are remnants of the glory in which he created Adam and Eve. The ruins of what once was.
The promise of what will be again.
I am grateful for that. And for the wisdom of a sour old man. "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
All except for that part of Christ, of His eternal Life, that dwells in my heart.
