Ecclesiastes 3:16

Ecclesiastes is a book written from the perspective of a wise and unflinching observer — traditionally understood as a king — who is wrestling with what life actually looks like when you pay close attention to it. The phrase "under the sun" is his way of describing life as experienced in the ordinary world, without special divine intervention. What he sees here is devastating: the very institutions designed to deliver fairness — the courts, the halls of justice — have been corrupted by those who abuse power. This is not a crisis of faith for him, but an honest reckoning: wickedness has infiltrated the structures meant to protect people.

God, I live in a world where justice is supposed to happen and often doesn't. I confess that sometimes I've looked away, and sometimes I've even contributed to it. Give me the honesty to name what I see, and the integrity to be different in the spaces where I actually have influence. Amen.

There's something almost relieving about finding this verse in the Bible. Not because corruption is good, but because the Bible doesn't pretend it isn't real. Ecclesiastes refuses to dress the world up. He's watched the courtroom, the city council, the systems built to protect the vulnerable — and he writes plainly: wickedness was there. This is a book for people who are exhausted by being told everything is fine when it clearly is not. But the Teacher doesn't become a cynic, even though that would be easy. He names what is broken without being defined by the brokenness — which is its own kind of hard-won integrity. There is a difference between someone who says "the world is corrupt, so nothing matters" and someone who says "the world is corrupt, so I need to pay attention to where I have influence." Where in your daily life — your workplace, your community, your family — are you willing to be someone who refuses to add to the wickedness already present there? That's not a small thing.