Eat, Drink and Enjoy Your Job, Eccl. 2:24

line art drawing of carpe diem. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 "A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God,  for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment"( NIV Eccl 2:24-25)?

I straggled into work at Franklin Academy. "Lord, I hate this job," I repeated my morning mantra as I searched for my cup of java. I then counted my years until retirement. Too many to offer relief. I stopped in my tracks as words of my students reverberated.

"I can't wait to graduate. When I have a job..."
"I can't wait until college is done, then I..."
"I can't wait..."

Intoning "I can't wait" ruins more lives. We're always looking for the next big thing. But what happens when you get it? Another big thing rears it's head: driver's license, graduation, college, career, retirement. What comes then? Death and the judgment. No one's counting the days to death! (Even though we Christians claim we look forward to it).

So celebrate your "hedonism:"

• eat--be it a gourmet meal or pizza (I'm redundant), savor the flavor. Enjoy. Even tofu. It's a gift of God.
• drink--obviously not in excess, but a good coffee, a cold glass of milk, a fine wine,  a home brewed beer or water from an artesian well, enjoy the provision of God.
• work--it's a gift. Instead of moaning, think what benefit your actual work gives you. Celebrate it. Once you retire, you're on your way to dying...may even do that before retirement.

Carpe Diem --this phrase may have been made famous in Dead Poet's Society, but Ecclesiastes' Preacher beat N.H. Kleinbaum in popularizing the concept. How can you eat, drink and be merry?