Change. Few of us like it; many of us fear it; most of us try to prevent it. And yet, change is all around us. We needn’t be mildly irritated, rocking on our front porch, vacantly musing, “When I was your age . . .” to recognize it. We click through the twenty-four-hour news cycle and frantically counsel our own hearts not to be troubled. We pause to chat with our neighbors next door who do not share a last name or the couple across the street whose first names are Jim and John, and we nervously wonder what is becoming of the nuclear family. Change is even in our very bones—we pass from one day to the next, remembering the “good ol’ days” when our bodies didn’t hurt quite as much, or at least when they were better able to do what our brains command. Change is everywhere. And whatever change it may be, part of us cries out, “This is not the way things ought to be!”

Ecclesiastes 7:10 puts these heart wrestlings to voice when Solomon instructs us not to ask, “Why were the former days better than these?” Here we see God identify our natural tendency when we observe change in the world, namely, that we are tempted to believe that the past was inherently better than the ominously looming tomorrow. But Solomon explains why such a question ought not quickly roll off our tongues: “For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.”