Ecclesiastes 2:1-8 and 13 and 24-26

Howard Drummond

I'm sure that we've heard of or even seen the hit TV series 24 - by the way film version is due out next year.

For those of us unfamiliar with the concept of '24', it tells of the exploits of Jack Bauer, played by Kiefer Sutherland, who works for the CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit).

Each 24 episode series covers '24' hours, which equates to an hour each episode, when doing the maths.

Having had eight seasons, Season Eight brought '24' to an end.

It's months later; it begins at 4:00 pm. Jack is about to leave for Los Angeles with his daughter Kim, her husband Stephen and daughter Teri, when Bauer is brought in by CTU to uncover a Russian plot to assassinate Islamic leader Omar Hassan during peace negotiations with U.S. President Taylor. Russia fears such peace negotiations will threaten their power. This leads to Islamic extremists creating a dirty bomb, which they threaten to detonate unless Hassan is handed over. Later, Jack must seek retribution for lives lost amidst a governmental cover-up initiated by former president Charles Logan and approved by Taylor.

In the end Jack is faced with both foreign and American governments hunting him down as they seek revenge for his actions against them.

At the end of the Season 8 Kiefer Sutherland stated that:

"This has been the role of a lifetime, and I will never be able to fully express my appreciation to everyone who made it possible. While the end of the series is bittersweet, we always wanted 24 to finish on a high note, so the decision to make the eighth season our last was one we all agreed upon. This feels like the culmination of all our efforts from the writers to the actors to our fantastic crew and everyone at Fox. Looking ahead to the future, Howard Gordon and I are excited about the opportunity to create the feature film version of 24. But when all is said and done, it is the loyal worldwide fan base that made it possible for me to have the experience of playing the role of Jack Bauer, and for that I am eternally grateful."

That's just 1 day, '24' hours, 1440 minutes giving us 86,400 seconds.

Time can be on our side or time can be an enemy. For Jack Bauer time was often against him. What about you? Is time more than something we see on our wristwatches, alarm clocks, mobile phones, clocks in the kitchen or living room?

It's to be noted that of the 24 hours, eight hours are said to be spent sleeping; 10 hours on average is spent at work, depending upon the job that you do this may be more or less; 1.5 hours of the 24 will be spent, on average, eating food providing that we have breakfast, lunch and evening meal. Already we've spent 19.5 hours out of 24, leaving 4.5 hours.

What of those 4.5 hours? How will you spend those 4.5 hours? Like Jack Bauer time was very much against him and it seems that here time is against us, or is it?

Some of my 4.5 hours is spent on leisure; mainly exercise in the form of jogging or cycling, having now been bought a mountain bike.

The definition of 'leisure' is 'freedom from time-consuming duties, responsibilities, or activities. What is it that we do for leisure? Some of us will immediately think of one particular activity, while some of us think of several activities; for some of us we have perhaps made no response to leisure.

Do we find ourselves wrapped up in our daily lives of business or should I say 'busyness' that we neglect some down time, some leisure time out of the 4.5 hours left? How is it that we spend those hours?

I'm sure that we've heard ourselves saying, "I've never enough time", or, "I ran out of time".

William Penn said:

"Time is what we want most, but what we use the worst".

In the book of Ecclesiastes 2:1-8 it mentions a period of time and how time is spent. To summarise these verses I believe what is being said is:

'I have everything a man could ever want or desire, I've worked hard for and I deserve to spend my time how I choose to spend it'...

But then verse 13 says: 'And indeed it was all vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun'. In other words it amounted to nothing.

There is a saying that:

'You can't make footprints in the sands of time sitting down'.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't have a time of leisure, but I think it is how and what we choose to do with our leisure time that is important, because things can come along to distract us, making time become an enemy rather than a friend.

Some potential questions to ask ourselves in the consideration of our leisure time are;

• Why do you want to do it?


• What purpose will it serve?


• Will it build me or others up in Christ?


• Will it help or hinder righteous living?


• Would it cause others to stumble?


• Will it cause me to lose control?

When Solomon gratified the flesh more than his spirit, he discovered it was all vanity and grasping the wind.