{"id":2849,"date":"2023-08-01T07:37:29","date_gmt":"2023-08-01T11:37:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2849"},"modified":"2023-08-01T07:39:36","modified_gmt":"2023-08-01T11:39:36","slug":"famous-first-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/08\/01\/famous-first-words\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous First Words"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.

Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re looking at Ecclesiastes, that strange and seemingly \u201cmodern\u201d Old Testament book that depicts what happens when humanity searches for ultimate meaning apart from God. <\/em>
 
\u201cIt was a dark and stormy night\u2026\u201d
 
That\u2019s the opening line from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford <\/em>by English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton. 
 
It is widely regarded as the worst opening line in the history of English literature, and has been endlessly parodied.  Charlie Brown\u2019s dog Snoopy, who was committed to writing the great American novel, began every one of his drafts with those seven words.
 
To be fair, here\u2019s the entirety of Bulwer-Lytton\u2019s first sentence:  \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents \u2013 except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.\u201d
 
Just awful.
 
So awful that it has inspired the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest, sponsored by the English Department at San Jose State University, that challenges entrants to compose \u201cthe opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels.\u201d The \u201cbest of the worst\u201d entrants are annually recognized.  John Farmer of Aurora, Colorado, won last year\u2019s grand prize:
 
\u201cI knew she was trouble the second she walked into my 24-hour deli, laundromat, and detective agency, and after dropping a load of unmentionables in one of the heavy-duty machines (a mistake that would soon turn deadly) she turned to me, asking for two things: find her missing husband and make her a salami on rye with spicy mustard, breaking into tears when I told her I couldn’t help\u2014I was fresh out of salami.\u201d
 
So bad it\u2019s good.
 
Let\u2019s go to the other end of the spectrum.  What is the best<\/em> of all opening lines? 
 
It\u2019s kind of hard to top Genesis 1:1, of course: \u201cIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.\u201d 
 
But if we\u2019re looking at more recent literature, here are some much-loved openers:
 
\u201cLife is difficult.\u201d (M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled<\/em>)
\u201cAll happy families are alike.  Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.\u201d  (Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina<\/em>)
\u201cThe past is a foreign country.  They do things differently there.\u201d  (L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between<\/em>)
\u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times.\u201c (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>)
\u201cAll children, except one, grow up.\u201d (J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan<\/em>)
\u201cIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.\u201d (Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice<\/em>)
 
Those are the kinds of starters that have compelled millions of people to keep reading to see what comes next.   
 
Then there\u2019s the opening salvo of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes:  \u201c\u2019Meaningless!  Meaningless!\u2019 says the Teacher. \u2018Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless\u2019\u201d (1:2, New International Version). 
 
That doesn\u2019t sound much like a Bible text.  It certainly doesn\u2019t seem to align with \u201cGod loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,\u201d the first \u201claw\u201d of evangelist Bill Bright\u2019s famous Four Spiritual Laws<\/em>.   
 
This is our initial clue that Ecclesiastes is not quite like anything else in Scripture.  It is arguably the most misunderstood and maligned of all the Bible\u2019s 66 books.  Some commentators have described its tone as cynical and despairing.  Rabbis spent centuries debating its inclusion in the Jewish Scriptures.  Christian preachers have cast their votes for its importance primarily by ignoring it.  It\u2019s entirely possible to attend church services for 50 years and never hear a single sermon from a text in Ecclesiastes. 
 
At the same time, Ecclesiastes is one of the most joyful books in the Bible.  It identifies pleasure as one of God\u2019s greatest gifts.  The author unflinchingly declares, as he wraps things up, that nothing is more important than obeying God.  
 
Ecclesiastes clearly deserves to be one of the five \u201cwisdom\u201d books of the Old Testament, which, taken together, constitute a whopping 15% of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures.
 
Therefore this oft-neglected gem will be front and center in our Morning Reflections throughout the month of August. 
 
Going one paragraph at a time, we\u2019ll explore what might be called the author\u2019s Royal Experiment:  Is it possible to have everything in the world \u2013 fame, power, love, money, wisdom, and influence \u2013 only to make the dreadful discovery that everything that\u2019s part of the so-called Good Life adds up to exactly Nothing?
 
But first we need to address this question:
 
If God\u2019s people have good reasons for believing that every moment is shot through with meaning, and that death itself cannot rob us of our life with God and each other, why is there a book in the Bible that begins by declaring that everything is meaningless?
 
That\u2019s where we\u2019ll begin tomorrow. 

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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Throughout the month of August, we\u2019re looking at Ecclesiastes, that strange and seemingly \u201cmodern\u201d Old Testament book that depicts what happens when humanity searches for ultimate meaning apart from God.  \u201cIt was a dark and stormy night\u2026\u201d That\u2019s the opening line from the 1830 novel Paul Clifford by English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton.  It is widely… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[618,232],"class_list":["post-2849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ecclesiastes","tag-meaning-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2849"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2849\/revisions\/2852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}