Taking Small Steps

Sometimes it can be hard to know what to do or what step to take next. Kenneth Morefield’s thoughts on Ecclesiastes give us some wisdom when we feel stuck. Morefield says, “‘In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good’ (11:6). The appropriate response to a world that overwhelms us intellectually and scandalizes us morally is not despair but incremental, daily, faithfulness. Just as Jesus teaches us to pray for our daily bread, Ecclesiastes admonishes us to get on with our daily work.” Morefield goes on recommend Robert Bresson’s film A Man Escaped as a good example of faithfulness depicted on the screen: The film “famously quotes from John 3:8, telling us that the wind, like the Holy Spirit, blows where it will. In the movie, a French prisoner named Fontaine (François Leterrier) is taken to a Nazi prison. Despite the seemingly impossible obstacles facing him, he takes small steps as they become available. Should he fight, or wait for a guard to pass? He doesn’t know which course will succeed or whether each will do equally well. His life is reduced to the present moment” (Kenneth Morefield, “13 Films that Capture the Themes of Ecclesiastes,” The Gospel Coalition, January 19, 2018, https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/13-films-that-capture-the-themes-of-ecclesiastes/).