Most people don’t want to think about death. In fact, many people don’t even want to talk about it. People commonly describe death as someone “passing away,” or, “leaving us,” or, “moving on.” While we may not like thinking about death, we all need wisdom for how to deal with it. Fortunately, in Ecclesiastes 9:1-18, Solomon gives us wisdom for dealing with death. It’s wisdom that can help us navigate death and even reorder how we live today.

We live in a world filled with injustice. We may face injustice because of broken systems or because of other people who mistreat us. And if we’re not facing injustice now, we certainly will one day. How do we live with injustice? While we can’t make it go away, wisdom can help us face it and endure it with hope. Solomon shares wisdom for living with injustice in Ecclesiastes 8:1-17.

If you were given the option of having riches, or influence or wisdom, which one would you choose? Most people would choose riches or influence because we see them pursue those things in life. But Solomon would argue that wisdom is the most valuable of those options. In Ecclesiastes 7:11-29, he shares why this is the case as he explains the value of wisdom.

People want to experience the most amount of pleasure and the least amount of pain in life as possible. While it may not be possible to have no bad days, there are things we can do to experience fewer bad days with better living. Solomon teaches us how to experience better living in Ecclesiastes 7:1-10.

There’s something that all of us experience, but none of us want to–and that’s loss in life. We live in a fallen world and things don’t always go the way we would like them to. Things go wrong. People do wrong things. Accidents happen. But much of the loss we experience is from our own doing. In Ecclesiastes 6:1-12, Solomon shares wisdom about true loss in life; the kind of loss that we can avoid bringing on ourselves.