Podcast appearances and mentions of Michael Eaton

Michael Eaton, Brooks Trailhead store manager and host of the Trail Running Film Festival in Seattle joins me to share his person running journey from cross country in his youth back in Kentucky to this year's training block for OCC in Chamonix. We chat about the challenges of life, the highs and lows that come with that, and the peace that can be found in the dedication to a daily training regiment. Michael also shares some details about the Seattle show of the Trail Running Film Festival. Get your tickets! LINKS TRFF in Seattle Brooks Trailhead Michael Eaton on Instagram Michael Eaton on Strava Brooks Trailhead on Instagram Connect with Singletrack on: Singletrack.fm Instagram Brought to you by Electric Cable Car - your trail and mountain news!  

Did Disney STEAL the technology behind their Genie+ app? There's a new patent lawsuit claiming that they did. Then we talk about how Disney had to settle a lawsuit that claimed they paid women less than men. Disney is facing a federal patent infringement lawsuit for allegedly stealing software ideas from former employees for its Genie Plus service. 00:00 Disney is being sued by former employees for allegedly stealing their software ideas for the Genie Plus service. 02:38 Disney's Genie Plus faces a federal patent infringement lawsuit from Agile Journey, with a trial scheduled for January 14th. 04:29 Disney is accused of stealing a patented itinerary planning system developed by Michael Eaton and William Redmond in the early 2000s, with evidence suggesting Disney was aware of the patent before it was issued. 05:46 Disney faces accusations of stealing ideas for Genie Plus, linked to a failed 2008 patent attempt and a trademark infringement case with costly legal outcomes. 07:44 Disney faces a lawsuit for patent infringement over Genie Plus, with claims of stolen ideas and Disney's defense citing undisclosed employee contributions. 09:37 Disney faces backlash for allegedly stealing Genie Plus, as they can't claim rights to technology they previously rejected. 10:47 Disney faces accusations of stealing fan-developed technology for Genie Plus and is embroiled in a legal battle over patent infringement claims. 14:08 Disney is accused of stealing ideas for its Genie Plus service amid a $43 million gender discrimination settlement and potential legal issues over consumer rights.

The Rust Belt cities are welcoming in a new renaissance – and it's thanks to the rise and return of great American manufacturing!In this special live episode of Manufacturing Happy Hour, we dive deep into the heart of the new American manufacturing renaissance with a stellar lineup of guests, including Drew Crowe, Michael Eaton, Mary Cecile “MC” Neville, Brad Jones, Jeff Hawkins, and Cynthia Chapple. Recorded at the 4 Hands Brewery in St. Louis, this episode brings together inspiring industry leaders to discuss the transformative power of manufacturing.Drew Crowe, the Founder of the New American Manufacturing Renaissance, and his inspiring career journey take center stage as he shares how manufacturing changed his life. Today, he's a public speaker and passionate advocate for the industry with a mission to reconnect communities with manufacturing. We hear how manufacturing is revitalizing cities like St. Louis, Detroit, and Philadelphia, where the industry is not only great for job prospects but also economic growth for the Rust Belt states as a whole. Drew also gives his take on the skills gap, a challenge many manufacturers still face, and how his work is helping to spread awareness of the career opportunities the industry offers. To hear more from manufacturing leaders, be sure to register for IMTS, taking place September 9-14 in Chicago. In this episode, find out:Drew describes the New American Manufacturing Renaissance and its mission to connect communities with manufacturing Drew takes us through his inspiring career journey and how he prioritized learning Why the Rust Belt cities are seeing a resurgence thanks to the help of manufacturing Why better job opportunities and upskilling help not just individuals but also the city and state achieve longer-term growth How manufacturing is helping the cities of St. Louis, Detroit, and Philadelphia and what they're getting right How the Delmar Maker District in St. Louis contributes to communities getting involved in manufacturing Drew's answer to the skills gap and why we need to spread awareness and give potential talent a helping hand The importance of relatable and diverse role models How events like this and online content help the industry get the attention it needsIntroduction to the Association of Manufacturing Technology (AMT)How manufacturing contributes to the resurgence of citiesWhat to expect from IMTSWhy industry leaders need to meet people where they're at and know their audience when talking about manufacturing Enjoying the show? Please leave us a review here. Even one sentence helps. It's feedback from Manufacturing All-Stars like you that keeps us going!Tweetable Quotes:“I want to bring back the opportunity where no matter what people look like, no matter where they're from, their sex, gender, political standing, race, whatever it is, we've got a lot of jobs that can change people's lives, and we just got to connect them to it.” - Drew Crowe“The world does not go around if we do not create.” - Cynthia Chapple“Manufacturers are the backbone of America. They built this country. We didn't need a pandemic to label manufacturers as essential workers. You have always been essential workers, period." - Drew CroweLinks & mentions:Drew The MFG Crowe, often referred to as the leader of The New American Manufacturing Renaissance, Andrew Crowe is one of the most influential people in manufacturing today. Andrew, or Drew as he...

Jazz releases these day fight a game of inches.  Almost everybody releasing music in the genre is technically accomplished and the rules have been laid out so long that almost everybody knows how to meet the listener's basic expectations.   What makes an album stand out in the flood of new music unleashed every week?  Sometimes it's as simple (and hard to define) as a sense of intensity, commitment, energy.  These four 2024 releases all demonstrate that quality to one degree or another.  Erik Friedlander – DIRTY BOXING: Deron Johnson – FREE TO DANCE; Michael Eaton – THE PHENOMINAL; Basher – MAY DAY.

Join us on the latest episode, hosted by Jared S. Taylor! Our Guests: Michael Eaton, CSO at NavVis & Dr. Frank Osborn, CMO at Tufts Medicine.What you'll get out of this episode:Dr. Frank Osborn and Mike Eaton discuss the importance of value-based care in today's healthcare landscape.Tufts Medicine Integrated Network and NavVis collaborate to enhance patient care and physician engagement.The partnership aims to deliver right care at the right time, reducing hospitalizations and improving patient experiences.Emphasis on creating a supportive environment for primary care physicians to combat burnout and attract new talent.To Learn More:NavVis Website https://www.navvis.com/Tufts Website https://www.tuftsmedicine.org/Michael Eaton LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeeaton/NavVis LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/navvis/Tufts LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/tuftsmedicine/Our sponsors for this episode are:Sage Growth Partners https://www.sage-growth.com/Quantum Health https://www.quantum-health.com/Show and Host's Socials:Slice of HealthcareLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sliceofhealthcare/Jared S TaylorLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaredstaylor/WHAT IS SLICE OF HEALTHCARE?The go-to site for digital health executive/provider interviews, technology updates, and industry news. Listed to in 65+ countries.

Welcome back to GenAI in the Enterprise with Zach Gardner! Today, we host Principal Consultant, Michael Eaton. Michael got his first computer right out of high school, and the problem-solving of programming stuck. He's been working in the industry since 1995. At first, Michael was extremely skeptical of Generative AI and its place in programming and the world in general. However, using tools like Github Code Pilot began to change his mind. Now, he's a cautious user, utilizing GenAI as sort of a paired programmer. Zach and Michael talk more about where GenAI should (and shouldn't) fit into today's world. There's no denying it, it has a place in our future, but what should that look like? Like, Subscribe, and Follow: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAIUNkXmnAPgLWnqUDpUGAQ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/keyhole-software Twitter: @KeyholeSoftware Find even more Keyhole content on our website (https://keyholesoftware.com/). About Michael: Michael is a proven technical leader and developer with over two decades of experience focusing on adding value to organizations via a solid understanding of business and technology needs. His strengths in communication and training, both through organizational team building, conference speaking, and longer-term educational opportunities. Well-versed in team leadership with both remote and onsite teams.  Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mjeaton/ 

It's fascinating how chance encounters can lead to monumental projects and a pivotal moment that completely changes the course of your career. In this episode, Michael Eaton, the Executive Director of the Missouri Association of Manufacturers, recounts the 'God moments' that led to his incredible journey from architecture to art and then eventually marketing to manufacturing—a transition driven by the practical need to make a living while staying true to his creative roots. Today, Michael supports the work of the growing Missouri manufacturing industry and his story is a compelling narrative of how one can intertwine their creative passions with their professional life. Dive into Michael's story for a dose of inspiration and a reminder that sometimes the universe conspires in our favor.

Come hang with us! Like what you hear? Connect with me - Website: gun.io/taylor Email: taylordesseyn@gun.io LinkedIn: Taylor Desseyn Tweet me: @tdesseyn Pics of the life, wife, daughter & dog: @tdesseyn

Lesson 8 Ecclesiastes 8:1-17 Wisdom For Government and Slow Justice Quotes: "If every consequence was immediate, life would be a self-centered pursuit of your own interests.” -Tommy Nelson "The fear of God is the awe and holy caution that arises from realization of the greatness of God.” -Michael Eaton

Michael Eaton has been involved in the magic community for years. He is an incredible performer and has over the years created several magic tricks. However, above and beyond all of this Michael is considered one of the top restaurant magicians in the USA.  He has developed a system designed to track how successful it is having a magician at a restaurant. This allows you to quantify and justify the cost of us being at the restaurant. On top of all of this, Michael is an incredible designer and digital marketer. He has helped many magicians around the world improve their online presence and ultimately book more gigs and make more money.

Michael joins us to talk magic & digital marketing this week!

In this episode, I am honored to interview Nathan Cravatt who shares a little bit deeper into his story, development of the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast, and what it truly means to look in ourselves to make changes to help us flourish spiritually. Michael Eaton, guest speaker from episode 3, helps me co-host, and gives his perspective on what it meant for him to make changes for spiritual flourishing.

Hear now, the word of the Lord from Ecclesiastes chapter nine, starting in verse one. But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5 For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. 6 Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun. 7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going. 11 Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. 12 For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them. 13 I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me. 14 There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. 15 But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. 16 But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard. 17 The words of the wise heard in quiet are better than the shouting of a ruler among fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinner destroys much good. Ecclesiastes 9:1-18, ESV The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our god endures forever. I mentioned last week that the previous week I had gone to an eye appointment. Just a normal appointment with an eye doctor to check if my vision had changed to check on general health, that sort of thing. During the course of that eye exam, I asked my doctor a question. I asked whether she would recommend whether it be a good idea for me to look into that laser vision correction surgery they offer. Now, that would be a really big deal for me because I am absolutely as blind as a bat. I don't actually know how to measure that, but I'm very blind. I can only read about this far in front of my face. I'm very, very blind and I've been using glasses or contacts since I was in the second grade. So the ability to have my vision corrected so that I could just get up in the morning and see without having to put anything on my face or in my eyes sounds like a wonderful prospect. So I asked her and she looked again at my chart, apparently to determine my age. She said to me, here's the thing you're going to have to make a choice of what you want. She says it's possible you can do this kind of a surgery, and it will correct your ability to see a far distance, your farsightedness. That choice will come with a price. To do that, you're going to have to actually sacrifice some of your ability to see things close up. Now, remember, I still can see things close up; as long as I have the book right here, I can see it without any glasses. It's a wonderful gift to just see it right there. Again, she looked at my age and said, you're about five years from the time at which that nearsighted, short sighted vision is going to start fading away. You're going to start needing reading glasses and bifocals to see things that you've always been able to see, but the problem is, if you get this surgery, you're going to have to sacrifice more of that than you think you will be comfortable with. Eventually that's going to even make it worse and you're going to need stronger reading glasses or even bifocals to correct what you are giving up in order to gain that farsighted vision. Now, for me, this is a dilemma because I read a lot. I read all the time and the idea of possibly damaging or making it worse, this short sighted nearsighted vision would be a big sacrifice to me. The reason I'm letting you into my doctor's appointment here is to tell you that I think this is the dilemma that we all face, all the time and everything we are doing. In life, we can either try to have the control, we can claim the control of the short sighted vision, or we can seek after farsighted clarity in life. Either in life, we're going to look at what's closest to us, what's near to us, and we're going to want to cling on to that or we're going to be willing to sacrifice this for a long term farsighted kind of vision. Now, the Bible calls this farsighted vision, not to just look at what affects me today, but to look at my life in the light of eternity. The Bible calls that gift wisdom. The Bible says that we don't naturally have wisdom because we all lost it at the fall of humankind with our first parents, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We need this wisdom to be able to see off into the distance, but this wisdom will come at a cost. It will mean giving up control over the short term nearsighted goals, that maybe your eyes are fixed on this morning. You can't imagine what it would be to give up the short sighted, near sighted vision to exchange that in order for the long term, far sighted eternal wisdom of God. Here's part of what the wisdom of God does, especially as we study this passage, it reminds us that whatever you think you have right now, even if it is not started to fade away, maybe it's like my nearsighted vision that day is coming perhaps sooner than you care to recognize. You can't cling to it. At some point the day is going to come when even the close things that you want to cling to with all your strength will fade away. Which means that maybe it's not a bad investment to go ahead and look at the long term wisdom. What this passage is teaching us, then, is that wisdom relinquishes control and readies us for eternity. Wisdom lets go of the short term gains that we might make it relinquishes control, and it readies us for the long term vision of what wisdom helps us to see about how to prepare our lives for all of eternity. That's our big idea, Wisdom, relinquishes control and readies for eternity. So three parts in the passage we're looking at today. 1. Relinquishing Control 2. Relishing today 3. Readying for Eternity Relinquishing Control Now as you come to this first section in verses one through six, we're talking about relinquishing control. Again, what the preacher is asking us is, are we going to claim farsighted clarity or are we going to cling to nearsighted control? The first thing the preacher wants to tell us is that we do not have the control we think we do over the short term, over what we can see with our near sighted vision. That this is quickly fading away far more quickly than we'd like to think it is. So the preacher says this in verse one, he says, "But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him." Now stop there for a moment, as we consider where the preacher is setting this up, where he's going to go. Now it's important to understand that this word deeds only appears here in the Old Testament, in this form at least. This word in other forms shows up all over the Old Testament. Normally, this is the word for to serve or to be a servant or a slave if it shows up in different versions. Specifically, this word is often used in relation to the gods, whether the true living God of heaven and Earth, or the false pagan gods. When you serve a god, that's another way of describing worship, to worship a god is to serve that god. As we're going to see, this idea of worship is very close top of mind for the preacher. So I think what the preacher is saying here, and I'll make a case for this as we keep going, is that he's saying all of this I laid to heart examining it all how the righteous and the wise and their worship are in the hand of God. Your righteousness, your wisdom and your worship are in the hand of God. Now where's he going with this? What's the issue that he's raising here? Well, this gets to the next part of verse one, "Whether it is love or hate, man does not know both are before him." Now this is a notoriously difficult sentence to interpret. There are interpretations that go in every direction. Now I'm going to give you what I think it is, and then I'm going to try to justify that based on the next verse that we'll look at in just a moment. What I think the preacher is saying is that we cannot manipulate blessings from God, by our deeds, by our actions or by our worship, by righteousness, by our wisdom or our worship. So he's saying all of our righteousness, all of our wisdom, all of our worship, it's in the hand of God. When it talks about whether it's love or hate, we're talking about the response that we get back from God. What should we expect from God when we order our righteousness or our wisdom or our worship? Can you give to God something and expect infallibly in my life right now I'm going to get something back from him? He says it's kind of a pagan way of looking at God. That if I offer the right God, the right act of worship at the right time, that I can guarantee success in my business or in my good fortunes in my agriculture or in my marriage or whatever I need are in battle. I just have to offer the right worship to the right god at the right time, and I can control the outcome that I'm going to get. The preacher says it's not that simple. You cannot manipulate God to get blessings that you want from him to control your life in the short term. Now, here's why I think this is what the preacher is saying look at verse two. He says, "It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice." There's that worship idea. Whether you worship well or you don't worship well, the same thing comes to everyone as the good one is so is the sinner. He who swears is, is he who shuns an oath. You cannot offer the right act of worship or the right righteousness or the right obedience or the right good deed to God at the right time and expect that you will be able to just select what you want, like a vending machine and select what you want and get that directly from God. It does not work the same way. The preacher acknowledges this is a very difficult reality for us. In verse three, he says "This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all." He's talking about death. We all end up dying. Also, "The hearts of the children of men are full of evil and madness is in their hearts while they live and after that, they go to the dead." He says the fact that we can't control our lives, the fact that the short term vision is not as much in our control as we like to think it would be. That we can't offer the right worship to the right God at the right time and get what we want out of life. He says this is a vexing thing. It's an evil under the sun. Because of this, many people turn to full out evil, the hearts of the children of men are full of evil. It inclines people don't want to say, well, if God isn't going to get me what I want, I am going to get what I want by any means possible. The preacher says not so fast, just because you cannot control life in the short term doesn't mean that you should have no perspective on life at all. This worry says you've got to sacrifice that short term vision in order to gain a longer term vision into eternity. So he says in verse four, "But he who is joined with all living, has hope. For a living dog is better than a dead lion." Now to understand what he's saying about the dog and the lion understand dogs were not cute, wonderful pets like we have them today. Dogs were scavengers that were just the lowest of the low out and about and vicious creatures. Dogs were not very much liked in the ancient world. Whereas a lion has a similar kind of idea that we would think about today. A lion was the king of the beasts. But it's better to be a living scavenger than a dead king of the beasts. Well, why is this? Well, in verse five, he says this, "For the living know that they will die." That's a surprising answer. Why is it better to be alive than to be dead, because if you're alive, you know that you're going to eventually die. The idea is that you can adjust your life accordingly, not with just the short term in view, but with the long term eternity in view. For the living know they will die, verse five and six, "For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun." Those who are already dead have no more ability to redirect their lives, to live their lives with a view toward eternity. What's done is done and whatever reward they have received for whatever they have done in this life, they've received it in full. What the preacher is telling us is that the purpose of this life is not to secure blessings in this life. Blessings that are here today and gone tomorrow. If they haven't started fading away, they will very soon. The purpose of this life is to live with a longer vision, a vision for eternity, to seek, to pursue blessings in the life to come. In order to prepare for eternity, what the preacher is saying is we must relinquish control over this life into the hand of God. Everything we have is in the hand of God, even if we don't know what it's going to bring to us in this life. This week, a couple of nights ago, my wife was with our children in the backyard, while I was inside cleaning up and doing dishes after dinner. The children were able to all pick a piece of candy and they were able to take it outside as they were playing in the backyard and enjoying their candy. My two year old in one fist that was clutching his bag of Reese's Pieces. Now everybody loves Reese's Pieces. Two year olds love Reese's Pieces, even E.T. loved Reese's Pieces. Everybody loves Reese's Pieces. I would cling to those things too. For whatever reason is he was playing with his Reese's Pieces clutched in one fist. He decided that he was going to take his other hand and start hanging from the monkey bars. Now, I don't know what went into this. Allison said she didn't see it happen, but suddenly he saw that he was there hanging from the monkey bars with one hand and realized that he was in a pickle, that he had his short term pleasure in one hand, he didn't want to let go of that, but he couldn't reach up and grab, and he really couldn't keep holding on to this. He was terrified because I mean, it's not very tall off the ground, but he's not a very tall person yet. So he realized what was he going to do at this moment? He had to choose one thing or the other. Well, guess what? Time caught up with him, and he couldn't hold his grip very long and he fell to the ground. Now Allison wanted me to assure you all that he is fine, he fell about this far. When he landed, his Reese's Pieces went absolutely everywhere. Biblical wisdom teaches us that we cannot cling to our Reese's Pieces forever. At some point, we've got to let go. As Hebrews 9:27 says, "It is appointed for a man to die once and after that comes judgment." We cannot control this life because ultimately, we cannot control God. You cannot cling tightly enough to your pleasures in this life to get what you want out of this life. Even if you do, it's fading away faster than you know. By our behavior or our worship or our righteousness or our wisdom, we cannot control God's blessings in this life because we ultimately cannot control life and death. The only thing we can do, then the only proper course of wisdom is to instead look beyond this world and prepare for eternity. To be clear, we can't control life after death either, but wisdom helps us to see with clarity how to prepare for our long term lives for all of eternity with a far sighted vision that looks in faith to Jesus Christ. The preacher says all of this now, but you'd think that might lead him to gloom and despair, but once again, as we've seen the few times in Ecclesiastes, he actually takes a sharp turn and leads us to where we don't expect he leads us into joy. Relishing Today So the second section we see in verses seven to ten is relishing today, relinquishing control and now relishing today. Let me just read this section one more time versus seven through ten, 7 Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do. 8 Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. 9 Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10 Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.Ecclesiastes 9:7-10, ESV There are two basic ideas to this section. The first is this that if you have God's approval, he talks in verse seven, God has already approved what you do. If you have this approval with God, then you are to live with joy. That's the first thing the preacher is encouraging us, live with joy. The question we need to be asking then, is how do we gain God's approval? When the previous section, you don't game God's approval by manipulating him, by trying to offer the right worship to the right God or the right time to secure his approval by what you do. Remember, Ecclesiastes is very pretty evangelistic. It doesn't give us all the answers here, it clears away the brush and clears away the wrong answers so that we can see with clarity the answer that the rest of the Bible is pointing to. That is to say that the way you gain God's approval is by nothing that you do, but it is by receiving through faith what God has done for you through Jesus Christ. That God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. If you know, Christ, if you are believing in Christ, if you are trusting in Christ, in God already approves of you. As Michael Eaton writes in his commentary on this passage, "The believer is not struggling for acceptance. Sometimes it feels like that that God must not be satisfied or pleased with me or accepted me yet, because maybe I haven't done the right things, and so I've got to keep going. Once I receive his acceptance, then God will bless everything I do." The preacher says it doesn't work like that. You don't know what will come in this life, but what you experience in this life is not indicative necessarily of your approval of by God in the life to come. You gain approval by faith. The believer is not struggling for acceptance, he is already accepted. Michael Eaton writes, "If you are already accepted through Christ and the Bible tells us death loses its sting. Eternity is not ominous and all of life is a gift." The second idea that the preacher gives us here is to remind us of the looming presence of death. He reminds us in verse 10, "There was no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol to which you were going." Sheol all comes up a lot in the Old Testament, it is a word that does not correlate to the New Testament idea of hell. It is not the place of eternal condemnation and judgment against the wicked who reject faith in Christ. It is rather the place of the dead, generally speaking. You might translate that as the grave, the grave. The second idea the preacher is saying is that Sheol or the grave keeps earthly pleasures in proper perspective. The preacher saying here that earthly pleasures are fleeting, so don't make too much of them. Sheol is coming. Don't live for the short term. Live with a vision for the long term. He's also saying this, that the earthly pleasures are fleeting, so enjoy them while you can as God's gift. After my two year old tumbled from the monkey bars and the Reese's Pieces that he's so loved were scattered all over the yard, my sweet daughter ran over to help him pick them up so that he could eat them. Yet there was dirt, but he's two, so he didn't care. Now that's a good gift. The reclaiming of what was scattered and lost to enjoy these. What the preacher is saying is if you have been reconciled to God through faith in Christ, enjoy your Reese's Pieces, go eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart for God has already approved what you do. Let your garments always be white. Let not oil be lacking on your head. Enjoy life with the wife whom you love all the days of your vain life. Enjoy this life as a gift. Life is so short and if we are properly prepared with a far sighted view of eternity, we should enjoy everything that comes to us in this life as a gift. This enjoyment cannot be dependent on nearsighted control, trying to squeeze short term gain from this world as though this were all we were living for. The enjoyment the preacher is talking about is a very different kind of enjoyment. It's the enjoyment of a life lived before the face of God without any demands upon him of trying to manipulate him or attempts to control him. It's an enjoyment that's prepared to see life move and unexpected, sometimes painful directions in the short term, because we have confidence in the goodness and the power of the hand of God in the long term. Readying for Eternity It's in this way by lifting our eyes from what's right in front of us this life, to the eternal perspective of wisdom in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's by this that God readies us for eternity. That's the final section readying for eternity in verses eleven through eighteen. In verses eleven through twelve, the preacher once again is saying we do not retain control over our lives in the short term and look at all the ways he says it in verses eleven through twelve. Life doesn't go in the way that you would expect it. "Again, I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift." You'd expect the Swift to win. "Nor the battle to the strong", you'd expect the strong to win the battle. "Nor bread to the wise", you'd think the wise could find a way to get bread. "Nor riches to the intelligent," you'd think they'd be able to manipulate the markets to gain their riches. "Nor favor to those with knowledge", can't they use their knowledge to gain favor? Why is this, why doesn't life go as we expected? Well, the end of verse eleven, "time and chance happen to them all." Time goes by chance happenings that are not in our control but are indeed in the hand of God. All of this happens to everyone. Then the preacher really draws this to its logical conclusion by saying in verse twelve, "For man does not know his time", the time of his death, "like fish that are taken in an evil net and like birds that are caught in the snare. So the children of man are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them." You don't have the control. You think whatever control you think you have is slipping away and fading away sooner than you think it will. That doesn't mean that wisdom is entirely without value. The preacher says the wisdom is of great value, especially by readying us for eternity even at the cost of short term benefits and especially of short term recognition. So in verses thirteen through sixteen, the preacher gives us this story, this this parable this fable. He says, "I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed great to me." He said there was a little city with few men in it, hear the descriptors, little city, few men. "And a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siege works against it." This is a David and Goliath story. That little city with few men don't stand a chance, but against all odds we read in verse 15, "there was found in it a poor wise man." Not a rich, wise man, not a favored wise man, a poor, wise man. "And he, by his wisdom, delivered the city." So you might think this is a success story, but the preacher goes on to say, "Yet no one remembered that poor man." That poor man was entirely forgotten. So again, does this mean that wisdom is worthless if you don't get that short term recognition, that short term gain? The preacher says not at all, verse sixteen, "But I say that wisdom is better than might." Though the poor man's wisdom is despised and his words are not heard, despite the fact that he didn't get short term recognition, wisdom is still better. He says it again, verse seventeen, "The words are the wise heard in quiet are better", there's that word again better, "better than the shouting of a ruler among fools." You think about that blithering blasting ruler who's trying to give shouts in the confusion, and it's the words of the poor, wise men and quiet that carried the day. Then again, verse eighteen, "Wisdom is better. Wisdom is better than weapons of war." Then the preacher says one sinner destroys much good, that's where he's going, and the next chapter and Lord willing, will deal with that next week. What the preacher is saying It is better. It is better to gain this wisdom, this far sighted clarity into eternity than to cling to nearsighted control of what's already fading away. Wisdom will benefit you in this life, but the greater benefit of wisdom is not what it can gain you now. It is the far sighted perspective when you live your life in the hands of Almighty God. Application Our application than this morning is this it comes from Proverbs 3:5-6, Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. Proverbs 3:5-6 Now, if you've been following so far in this sermon, you probably have noticed that the preacher at times seems to be giving contradictory advice. He says, obey God, but don't imagine that your obedience will secure you any blessings. He says the living are better than the dead, but that's only because the living can then prepare for their death. He says eat, drink and be merry, but make serious preparations for eternity after you enter Sheol. He says wisdom is better than might and weapons, but he says that too will be forgotten. These sound on the surface like contradictions, but they're not. The preacher is giving us this comprehensive worldview that explains the things that we cannot explain that gets our minds around a vision of this world that is far beyond anything we could think or imagined. The preacher is teaching us that your life and everything in this world is under God's absolute sovereign control, that's what he described in verse one as the hand of God. All of this is in the hand of God, God's absolute sovereign, kingly almighty powerful control. This world, on the other hand, and everything in this world is sinful, vain and broken, and it's passing away. Your only hope, then in life and in death is to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. If God has indeed accepted you through Christ, then even this vain world God turns to a blessing. You don't have to work to make what's in front of you a blessing. If you have been accepted by God, then God gives you all gifts in life as a blessing for you to enjoy. You must fully confront this fact that you have no control over your life. You just don't. As much as you like to think that you can plan around the uncertainties of life you can't. We know this intuitively, but we still try anyway, don't we? We're shocked when something happens that we don't think we deserve or that didn't fall into the parameters of our plans. The infinite wisdom of God stretches further than we want to believe all the way to the evil and the wickedness and the calamity and the suffering and the disaster of this world. Even to the point of seeing that the same kinds of things happen in this life, to the righteous and to the wicked a like, that doesn't make sense from our perspective. Yet in the wisdom of God, his wisdom is big enough to encompass even that. So we have to decide as we look around and we see the randomness and the chaos of life, we have to either decide that life is meaningless and meaningless and chaotic and capricious, or even that the most explicable, inexplicable events in life are rather in the hands of a sovereign, wise and loving God. Either there is chaos or there is an order, even when we cannot see it. We can either trust in the Lord with all our heart or we can lean on our own understanding. We can ultimately do both. We can either acknowledge him in all our ways or we can seek to establish our own paths. We cannot ultimately do both. We can either lay claim to the far sighted clarity that the gospel gives us or we can cling to nearsighted control over the affairs of our lives. We cannot ultimately do both. How, though, can we trust him when nothing in her life makes sense? Last week, I talked about spiritual motion sickness again about this idea, when I when our lives are down, we're looking at something near to us, something that our eyes are fixated. When we fixate our eyes on the things that we cannot fix that are ultimately out of our control. We think that we're in control. We're staring down at like a book or something in the car, and we think we have it in control, but all around us, we can feel movement. We can feel the jostling of this world. We can feel that this world is moving around us in ways that we cannot control and in our souls. Just as sitting still and reading a book in a car can make you sick as you feel the bumps in the roads and the turns of the car, so our souls can be spiritually sick when we get this conflicting sense of whether we are in control or whether we are not in control. The remedy for motion sickness is to set our eyes on that long term horizon and that's the remedy that the preacher is talking about here. Give up what you can control today by setting your eyes not just on the certainty of your death, but beyond death, to the fact that one day God will judge the living and the dead. The way we do this is to ground ourselves in the immovable, unshakeable fact of God's love demonstrated once for all at the cross of God's beloved son, Jesus Christ. I need no other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died and that he died from me. When we suffer evil after living moderately good lives, we hate it. We must remember, though, that Christ suffered under the infinite horrors of hell and the full curse of God's wrath after living a perfectly righteous life. It's that Christ crucified that is the wisdom of God hidden and predestined before the ages and now revealed to all the world through the word of God and the preaching of the gospel. That, the gospel is the horizon of wisdom that will heal us, Jesus Christ and him crucified. God's wisdom is big enough to hold it all together. Can you sacrifice nearsighted control to entrust yourself to the far sighted goodness of God's hand? Wisdom relinquishes control and readies for eternity. Are you willing to give up that control in order to gain the blessings that you will never forfeit in the life to come? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us Christ, that you would give us Jesus Christ and him crucified, his wisdom from God and sanctification and righteousness. We pray that if there are any here who have not yet given their lives to Christ, that today by your word and through the power of your Spirit, you would lead them to believe and trust upon Jesus for their salvation. To lean not on their own understanding, but in all their ways to acknowledge Christ and to let him direct their ways for their salvation. We pray this in Christ name. Amen.

Hear now, the word of the Lord from Ecclesiastes 7:1-14. A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. 2 It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart. 3 Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad. 4 The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. 5 It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. 6 For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity. 7 Surely oppression drives the wise into madness, and a bribe corrupts the heart. 8 Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. 9 Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools. 10 Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this. 11 Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. 12 For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. 13 Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked? 14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. Ecclesiastes 7:1-14, ESV The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Well, my wife and I have several children and we've had children in our home through foster care at various times. One thing that we've learned about children is that you love them so much. Yet sometimes it can be frustrating to watch the way that they live their lives, because they don't always know what is good for them. Sometimes, for example, children want to play rough and they're in a good mood and want to play rough, and they're excited about playing rough and the rough game escalates and you warn them, say that's not going to end well. They play rough and suddenly someone gets a scratch or a bump and then the world is over. It seemed good in the moment, and yet it was a bad choice when they look back on it. Sometimes the rule is you can't have dessert without eating the vegetables and they don't want to eat the vegetables. The vegetables don't seem good to them. So, they sit at the table and refuse to eat the vegetables, and then they are upset and can't fathom why they wouldn't get the dessert. It's hard to learn what is good in life. Indeed, as I consider my own life, I'm still struggling with these basic lessons. I usually eat my vegetables, but I think of the fact that I want to grow in wisdom. The Bible is very clear about how to gain wisdom, about the good things to do to gain wisdom. So, I have to ask myself, is my delight truly deeply from the soul in the law of the Lord? Do I meditate on God's word day all the way through until night? Or I want to be someone who is characterized by peace? I want to be anxious for nothing. Again, the Bible tells us what is good, how to pursue that. But I have to ask myself, is it true that in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, I make my requests known to God? So, the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding will guard my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus. You see even for what we know to be good? Sometimes in the moment, we struggle to truly believe that it is in fact good. The Bible tells us why this is, that there is a corruption deep in our souls that bends us or inclines us or orient's us or distorts our perception in such a way so that we don't always see good for what it is. We don't recognize it for what it is and sometimes we call evil good. Well, how do we fight this? Well, fighting this begins by an acknowledgement of our ignorance, to say, I don't know what is good for me and I need to help. It begins also by a refusal to trust our own intuition to discern between good and evil. It requires us then to be quick to remind ourselves that God alone knows what is good. That's our big idea for today that God alone knows what is good. So, in the passage that we're looking at today, the preacher is going to talk about good things. 1. Dying Well 2. Living Well 3. Trusting God in Life and Death. Dying Well So let's start with dying well in verses one through six. Before we get into the first six verse, I want to remind you about the verse right before the section that we're looking at in Ecclesiastes 6:12. We talked about last week that the first six chapters of Ecclesiastes really marked the first half of the book, and in the first half of the book, the preacher is essentially surveying absolutely everything under the sun to try to investigate whether there actually is lasting good that we can find in this world. He does this thorough, complete, exhaustive search of the world and discovers that there is nothing truly good in this world. So, the way that the first half ends in verse 12 is with two questions. Look at the first question. Ecclesiastes 6:12 For who knows what is good for man while he lives the few days of his vain life, which he passes like a shadow? Ecclesiastes 6:12, ESV Who knows what is good? Well, in the passage that we are looking at today, as if to answer this question and versus one through 14, the word good appears 11 times. Eleven times the word good appears in 14 verses. Do you want to know what's good? Well, the preacher is about to tell us what is good. However, it's not at all what we think it would be. So, in verse one, we find this principle, this proverb right out of the gate. A good name is better than precious ointment. We say, great, fantastic. I can do this. Pursue a good name, a good reputation. Got it. Check. What else you got for me? Then we go to the next half of verse one and Derek Kitchener and his commentary writes, "There's really nothing that prepares you for the body blow that follows in the second half of the first verse" A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth. Ecclesiastes 7:1, ESV Well, there are a lot of attempts to explain how these two halves of verse one fit together, and some people don't think that they fit together at all. But I think Michael Eaton is surely right when he says that this is a comparison. As a good name is better than precious ointment, so the day of death is better than the day of birth. They're comparing it. You know, the one you don't have to be really instructed on the one that one sort of an easy principle, but the second one, you need to understand that this is just as good. In fact, more good for you to think about the day of your death and the day of your birth. But why is this the case? Well, it's certainly not that God prefers death to life, it's certainly not that death itself is better than life. God is the ever living one. God is the one who has life in himself. God is the giver of life. God sent his own son, Jesus Christ, into this world to raise up the dead to new life. God loves life, and he hates death. Death is the last enemy that will be defeated. Death is not better than birth. That's not what he is saying, but we get something of what he is saying in verse two. What is he really mean? Well, verse two he says, It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.Ecclesiastes 7:2, ESV . This idea of laying it to heart means to consider it, to ponder it. When we think of our heart, we think of our emotions, our feelings. However, when the Old Testament talks about the heart by far most often, it's talking about the way that we think in the Old Testament. The heart is the seat of your thinking, not your feeling. In fact, many times when you read about the mind or the thoughts, you are really reading a word that in the original Hebrew actually is heart, and it's just translated into something that will better understand since we think about the mind as the seat of thinking. The heart is the seat of thinking in Hebrew thinking, and the preacher wants us to lay this to heart to grapple with this, to consider this that a funeral is better than the house of feasting. Well, what should we be considering? While verse three, Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.Ecclesiastes 7:3, ESV . There's again the heart. Now literally this is by evil of face, or sadness of face. This is the phrase that is used to describe when Joseph comes into the prison cell and sees the Pharaoh's cup bearer and his baker there. They've had this dream that's disturbing and they don't know what to make with it. Will they have evil of face, is what it says. They're disturbed, they're vexed, they're not sure what to make of this. So, Joseph asked them, what's wrong? the preacher says it's by this vexation, this disturbed nature of your face that the heart is made literally good. When we are disturbed by sorrow and we are disturbed by the funerals that interrupt our lives, this is good. This sorrow is good, not because death is good, but because this forces us to consider the end of all mankind, our own end, our own mortality, the fact that we too will die. That any good that we encounter in this Earth, the mirth, the feasting, the laughter, all of this, is fleeting, it's temporary, it's passing away, and it can't ultimately satisfy us. So, verse four, The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools. For as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fools; this also is vanity. Ecclesiastes 7:4-6, ESV The preacher wants to make us think. The preacher wants us to grapple with not just in general big questions, but the ultimate questions, what is life and what is going to happen after death? You know, there's a common question that people ask each other. Maybe you've asked it, or maybe you've considered it. If you knew that a week from today, you were going to die. That next week, the next Lord's day, next Sunday would be your last day of living. How would you spend the next seven days? What would you do? Particularly, how would what you would do over the next seven days differ from the ways that you would ordinarily spend those seven days? If it was just another ordinary week where you got up and went to work and did everything else that you normally do? Well, probably you wouldn't spend that week doing ordinary, normal things. You'd maybe try to check things off of your bucket list. Things that are exciting and adventurous that maybe you've always wanted to do but have always been content to put off for one day someday. Well, there aren't that many one day, some days left seven to be precise, so you want to get down to checking off those items off your bucket list. Or maybe you'd want to have a conversation, a conversation to reconcile with someone with whom you've been estranged. Or a conversation where you tell someone you love them in a way that you're not sure that you've ever expressed to them, to let them know how much they mean to you. If you knew that you were going to die in a week, your life would change over the course of this week. The preacher here is asking a similar, but a very different question. He's saying if you laid it to heart that you were going to die someday, how would that change the rest of your life, whether you have a little or a long time left to live? Not just if I introduced you some concept that you didn't realize that you were going to die, probably you do know that you're going to die. All of us know theoretically that our days are numbered and then we must die someday. But if you laid it to heart. If that thought truly captivated your mind and your heart. How would that change the way you would otherwise ordinarily live? How would it redirect the course of life that you would naturally go upon if death were no consideration for your life? These are big questions, these are important questions, and as a church, we need to be a place where these questions are things that we are talking about. We want Harvest Community Church to be a place where we take these big questions seriously because they are of the utmost importance. These are very literally matters of life and death, and of eternal life and eternal death. The Bible instructs us we should be like the wise. The wise recognize that the things that appear to be good in this world are nothing but vanity. They're a mist, they're a breath. They are here today and they are gone tomorrow. They cannot provide enduring, satisfying joy. They can only distract us for a little bit of time, and we are left back with the utter dissatisfaction we have in life. No closer to finding the satisfaction and the ultimate good that we are looking for. Especially the celebration and the feasting and the laughter in the singing. These can distract us from the fact that we will die. Certainly, the preacher tells us elsewhere, there's a time and a season for everything. There is a time for celebration. There is a time for feasting and for laughter and for singing. The preacher doesn't want us to be miserable. But he's saying it is good, it is best for us to be considering our mortality. Again, these questions are more than simply trying to understand the fact that we will die. Once we lay it to heart that we will die, not just know about it, but lay it to heart. Well, that raises another set of questions. How then should we live? If we live with a view toward our eventual death, how then should we live now? Living Well This brings us to our second section. Number two, living well now in versus seven through 13. In the length of this section there are a number of proverbs, and some people just think these are just sort of random rapid fire proverbs, just considering one idea after another with no connection. But I think we can see some degree of connection and I characterized the connection in this way. The preacher is talking about our reactivity and specifically how we should prepare ourselves to react as the life and circumstances change around us. A reactivity? Then second, our proactivity, regardless of the circumstances, how should we proactively live in life? Then third, our counter activity, what should we press back against? How should we cut against the grain? How should we swim against the current of how we would otherwise ordinarily live, if we did not lay it to heart that we too must die? As our days are numbered and the clock is ticking. So, the preacher starts with reactivity, how should we react to the changing circumstances that we encounter in life? So he starts in verse seven saying, Surely oppression drives the wise into madness, and a bribe corrupts the heart. Ecclesiastes 7:7, ESV Now, the preacher is not simply saying don't oppress people and don't take bribes. That's obvious. We know that, he knows that, he knows that we know that, he doesn't need to say that. What he's rather saying is when you encounter corruption and when you encounter oppression, you should be prepared for it. It shouldn't drive you to madness because you should know that it is coming. Now again, this doesn't mean that we're passive about it, that we ignore it, that we just dismiss it or make justifications for it. But the preacher doesn't want us to be vexed about it. Prepare your heart to understand that this is a dark, sinful, broken world. Then verse eight, he says this, Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit. Ecclesiastes 7:8, ESV At the end of something is not more pleasurable than the beginning. Usually when we start something, you know, we just started our children's ministry on Wednesday night, this last week, and it was a tremendous amount of fun. Everyone was excited. Everything went really well. There was a lot of energy and enthusiasm. It's more fun to start things than to end things, because then things mean that it's done or it failed, or it didn't work out the way you thought it would. The preacher says it's not more pleasurable, but it's better because when you come to the end of something, you don't have the same blind optimism as when you start. I think this children's ministry is going to revolutionize our children's discipleship. Children will be impacted for eternity, and I think that's true. But the preacher says, slow your roll, don't have too high of expectations. This is a difficult dark world. It's better for you to think about the end of things and to be patient with whatever comes then to be proud and arrogant about what you were able to achieve in your life. Prepare your reactions accordingly. In verse nine, Be not quick in your spirit to become angry, for anger lodges in the heart of fools.Ecclesiastes 7:9, ESV Why is this? Why does anger lodge in the heart of fools? Well, anger comes with unmet expectations. When you want something, you expect something, whether you say it out loud or you just expect it because, of course that's what you would expect, you don't need to say it. When those expectations are unmet, that's when anger suddenly rises, rushes to the surface. Well, the preacher saying the wives don't have these kinds of high expectations. The wise know that this world is broken, they know that this world is full of vanity. When you have low expectations, it's much more difficult to become angry because you weren't expecting better. Ten in verse 10, the preacher gives us one more reactivity statement, preparing yourselves for your reactions to the changing circumstances of life. He says Say not, “Why were the former days better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.Ecclesiastes 7:10, ESV Now this comes up a lot, we think a lot about the good old days. The French have this remarkable statement, "Oh, the good old days when we were all so unhappy." You see we tend to wear rose colored glasses about the past. Oh, I was so happy then, things were so easy then, because we've forgotten about how difficult things were then, just as things are difficult now. It's a lie to have nostalgic views that sugarcoat everything that happened in the in the past. Evil is always with us; vanity is always with us under the sun. There's another reason that there's a problem with nostalgia. It's that pining for the past won't fix anything in the present. It is not from wisdom that you say this. Well, again, this is the preacher coaching us on a life live well, of how we should train our reactions to the changing circumstances of our world. In addition to this, the preacher then goes on to talk about our proactivity. Regardless of what happens, regardless of what you face, how should you proactively build your life? What he talks here is about the proactivity toward stability in life and particularly he's going to talk about financial stability in life. Pursuing financial stability is not sin. It is wisdom, it is wise stewardship. Now he's not talking about success where you spend every waking moment toiling after the next dollar. He said already that that is an appetite that will never satisfy you. If you're idol, if your life is spent chasing after money. He's not talking about that. Trying to get as rich as you can so that you can live with the pleasures that you want to live with. He's talking rather simply about stability. So, verse 11, Wisdom is good with an inheritance, an advantage to those who see the sun. Ecclesiastes 7:11, ESV When we think about inheritance, I think a lot of times maybe you don't, but at least I do, I think a lot of times about the way that very often inheritance means just sort of a transfer of cash. Even when there are assets like land or other property, a lot of times those are liquidated so that it can, so that the inheritance can be more easily divided between people. But in the ancient world, there was one thing to transfer down from generation to generation, land. Land was the source, the foundation of what you would do to be able to work the land to make money. You couldn't manufacture more land, so either you had land to be able to work and to make your wealth or you didn't. So, gaining inheritance was a big deal in terms of a foundation for stability to be able to grow your wealth and to become stable in that society. The preacher says wisdom is good with an inheritance. It's an advantage to those who see the sun. It's an advantage in some way. What is the advantage? Well, he tells us in verse 12, For the protection of wisdom is like the protection of money, and the advantage of knowledge is that wisdom preserves the life of him who has it. Ecclesiastes 7:12, ESV You need both he's saying, you need wisdom to live wisely and you need some kind of financial stability. Again, it's not sin to seek financial stability, its wisdom, it is wise stewardship. Again, he's not talking about seeking all the money you possibly can to make yourself wealthy. He's talking about stability. One of the ways we know this is where he goes next. He talks about counter activity. How should we counter, how should we cut against the grain, how should we swim against the current, against the corruption of our souls that makes us desperate for good in this world that isn't to be found? Especially that we too often find with money. We see that as the good sometimes that will make us truly happy. But in verse 13, the preacher reminds us that we've got to keep our eyes on what is true. Consider the work of God: who can make straight what he has made crooked?Ecclesiastes 7:13, ESV God is the one who has made creation and he originally made it straight, but then he made it crooked. Now what's he talking about here? Well, he's not talking about God despite us messing up creation so that we suffer. He's talking about the just judgment that has come in the form of a curse against creation because of human sin, because the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve. We talked about this before, but I'll remind you the word that comes up so often in Ecclesiastes, the word vanity. That's a Hebrew word, Ecclesiastes written in Hebrew. Very early on before Christ came into the world the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek. The Greek word that they use to translate this word vanity is the word that Paul uses in Romans 8:20-21 to talk about the vanity of creation itself. That God has made crooked what was originally created straight. So Romans 8:20-21, For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.Romans 8:20-21, ESV Neither wisdom nor money nor anything else in this world can overcome the futility of the curse. So, the preacher says we need to live well by preparing our reactions to disappointment in this life. By proactively seeking not to advance ourselves to the stars financially, but stability to get through this life. Then always counteracting the impulse, the desire, the draw to try to put too much stock, too much hope, too much faith in this world. What the preacher is saying, part of living well, part of living with the end in mind with our impending death in view, is thinking in advance. That's part of it. Preparing your heart for your reactions in response to corruption and disappointment. To planning your finances proactively so that you know that the purchases you want today will not bring you the satisfaction that you are seeking. So, it leads you to rather prioritize savings and wise stewardship of the resources that God has entrusted to you. It means fighting the impulses and the desires and the passions and the lusts of your soul toward foolishness and evil by counteracting the lurches of your heart toward what will not truly satisfy. Live well, the preacher says, live as well as you can. But even so, he says, fix it in your mind that living well will not be your salvation. This will not be the life hack that gives you perfect satisfaction and joy. That's what stoicism promises, not Christianity. You cannot ultimately make straight what God has made crooked. We are all waiting for the time when Jesus Christ will return to accomplish that, to make a new heavens and Earth, to make straight forever what has become crooked. So the preacher is telling us to live then, well. Live from the first principle that everything in this world is vanity. He's not preaching simply self-denial, just live a really difficult life. He is rather telling us, deny yourself what is vanity in this life and exchange what can never be lost, what can never be corrupted for the eternal good that will come by the promise of God through faith. Trusting in God in Life and in Death The preacher underscores this point in verse 14, where he summarizes what he's getting at in this first half of the chapter. The preacher says this, In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. Ecclesiastes 7:14, ESV Now, here are a couple of more instances of that word good that appeared 11 times in these 14 verses. We didn't look specifically at all of them, but in verse 14, it says in the day of prosperity, literally in the day of good, be joyful or literally be in good, in good spirits, be joyful. In the day of adversity, here it's the opposite of good, in the day of evil, consider God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him. God has made the day of good, and he has made what the preacher calls here the day of evil. It's important to note we've mentioned this a couple of times, evil in Hebrew does not always mean moral evil and it doesn't mean moral evil here. The preacher is not charging God with moral evil. Evil means calamity or disaster. It's the ultimate extent of what it means that there is vanity in this world, that everything has been subjected to futility and frustration. What the preacher is saying is that God has ordained both from the hand of God, both good and bad come. Why? So that man may not find out anything that will be after him. Now, I mentioned that much of this chapter is written to answer the question that was raised at the end of the last chapter. The first question of chapter 12, who knows what is good for man? There's a second question and that question was this in Ecclesiastes 6:12 for who can tell man what will be after him under the sun? Well, now we find an answer to that question, too. God is established both good and the disaster, the calamity of this world, so that no man may find out anything of what will be after him. We are utterly helpless. We are completely dependent upon God. This is where God has put us to lead us to trust in him. The wise live, according to two fundamental truths. Number one, the day of good is not permanent in this life. We don't chase it. We don't cling to it as it comes. We enjoy it as a gift from God. Recognizing that very soon life will change. Number two, that while we are not in control of what comes each day, God is. The wise live according to a principle not of control, of trying to live my best life now, but a principle of trust that God alone knows what is good. That's the big idea, God alone knows what is good. One of my favorite books is a book by C.S. Lewis. It's a book called Perelandra. It's maybe not one of his better known books, not like The Chronicles of Narnia, but it's a fictional book. It's in the space trilogy, it's the second book in the space trilogy. In Perelandra C.S. Lewis imagines what would it be like if God created a new humankind on another planet? So he creates the first man and the first woman on another planet. This is assuming that everything that's happened in the Bible, everything that has happened in our history has already happened. What would it be like if God started with a new human race that was related to ours? So as a part of this interrelation, God sends a Christian from this world, a man named Ransom, sends him to this other world, this planet named Perelandra. Perelandra is a planet that's covered with water, oceans everywhere. For them, the forbidden sin is not to eat from a particular tree, it's that in this world of water, they have to trust God for where they are going to sleep. They have to sleep on the vegetation that floats on the oceans. What they are forbidden from doing is to try to seek security and stability for their own by sleeping on the few set of fixed dry islands that are in that world. That's the constant temptation whether they should rebel against God in that way. So, this Christian ransom has to convince and talk and plead with the Eve of that planet, she's called The Green Lady, to tell her not to commit that sin. What's so interesting about this book is how her perfect innocence and absolute ignorance of anything related to sin or death often teaches Ransom. Then Ransom from his knowledge of sin and death is teaching The Green Lady. So, one of the best scenes in this is when The Green Lady, talking about all the swimming she does in her life says, "How can one wish any of those waves not to reach us, which the Lord is rolling towards us?" How would you not want, if the Lord is rolling it toward us, how would you not want one of those waves to reach us? Then Ransom, knowing the difficulties of his own life in this world Earth says, "Have you no fear that it will ever be hard to turn your heart from the thing you wanted to, the thing that the Lord sends? The Green Lady learning says, "I see, the wave you plunge into and be very swift and great. You may need all your force to swim in it." You mean, hey, the Lord might send me a good like that? She doesn't see it as anything that would harm her. She sees it as a good to be stretched in that way. But Ransom, something of a pessimist here says, "Yes or like a wave so swift and great that all your force was too little." The Green Lady says this, "But it often happens that way in swimming. Is not that part of the delight? That sometimes we are sent waves that are too much for us?" The only reason she can say this is because she knows from whose hand every wave comes, and she trusts that if the Lord sends that wave to her, even if it overwhelms her and her strength is not enough, that's part of the delight. Application The application from this passage, keeping the end in mind the eventual day of our death and trying to live well in light of that, trusting the Lord is this seize the day. Seize the day by specifically relinquishing control over your life. Many commentators in Ecclesiastes observed this theme of carpe diem, seize the day, throughout Ecclesiastes. There's always a twist. Usually, when people talk about seizing the day, they talk about living for today, seize the day, live for today. But this theme in Ecclesiastes means seize the day by refusing to live for today. So, the first way we see seize the day, is seize the day by living with sober recognition that you will die. Don't wait another day to contemplate your mortality. The fact that you must die. If you ever have a chance to look at art from the 16th and 17th centuries, especially portraits and paintings of people, you will frequently find a human skull painted into the painting. Sometimes it'll be on the desk of the person being painted. I mean, these are nobles or kings or scientists or philosophers, great men and women, and they're painted with a skull, either on their desk or on a shelf, or sometimes they're holding it in their hands. That was called a memento mori, Latin for a reminder of death. What they wanted to say is as significant as my life feels to me right now, as great as my accomplishments or achievements or position may be, I too will die. Well, we need a memento mori in our lives. We need a reminder of death now. I'm not saying you have to get a human skull and put it on your nightstand. That might be creepy when you wake up in the shadows of the night. But nevertheless, we need reminders that we will die. Indeed, this is part of the reason that we call this day the pinnacle of our week, the Lord's Day, when we are gathered together. Part of what we are gathered together is to remember that this world is not our home, this world is not all that there is, and then we too will die. Over the years, as we see beloved saints die and we bury them, and we were reminded again of our own death. Lord's day by Lord's Day, we gather together to remember the timeless one. Who entered into this world, who took on flesh so that he might suffer under all of the vanity and the frustration, the futility that we must undergo. That the Lord Jesus Christ might take upon himself our sin so that we might be saved. We gather week by week to remember him and to worship him. Seize the day. The Bible says that because of our sin, God's wrath is against us, and God's wrath is infinite and it is everlasting so that unless you make peace with God, the Bible says that you will suffer in hell forever, bearing the curse of God's infinite wrath for all eternity. Oh, sinner, don't live for today. Don't live for pleasure and feasting and laughter and mirth and partying and entertainment. Do you not know that one day your soul will be demanded of you? Do you not know that the righteous judge of all the Earth will surely demand that you give an account for how you have stewarded not just the wealth he is entrusted to you, but your life itself? God sent Christ, his son, the sinless one into this world. In your despair as you think about what am I going to do? Where will I run from the Lord? How will I escape his judgment? Christ the Savior calls to you. There is hope. He excuses nothing of the heinousness of your sin, He doesn't minimize it, He doesn't sweep it under the rug. Christ came into this world to take all of the wrath of God against you, upon himself. To drink to the dregs, the cup of God's wrath against you. He went there out of love and mercy for you. You don't have to despair, you don't have to be without hope, because Christ alone has satisfied every bit of God's wrath. To show you the great love of God for you. Will you flee from the calamity and disaster and evil of your sin to find refuge in the Lord Jesus Christ? Will you turn away from the vain laughter of this world and turn to the true and solid lasting joys and pleasures of the master? Seize the day. Turn from your sin. Trust in Christ. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us Jesus Christ. We pray that he would be the hope that every Lord's Day he the potentate of time, the one who set apart one day out of seven each week that we might gather in the pinnacle of our week to rejoice in the presence of the Lord. We pray that you would give us Christ, to know him, to love him, to embrace him as our eternal, everlasting good from this time forth and forevermore. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.

For me, the Tarot has been a vehicle that externalizes and unlocks the narratives we hold about our pain. Always looking to evolve my tarot studies to help my patients, I have found a new deck called the Black Power Tarot. Created by visionary musician King Khan (with drawings from Michael Eaton, under the supervision of legendary filmmaker and tarologist Alejandro Jodorowsky) the new deck "decolonizes" the historical tarot de Marseille and awakens the archetypes of black artists, alchemists, and magicians. King Khan gives us a deep journey through his own experiences with the tarot, decolonization, his musical success, and the magic of his lessons from Jodorowsky. Video of show on YouTube: https://youtu.be/y4dp5xrARIk to purchase the deck https://www.hellomerch.com/collections/king-khan and check out King Khan on your music source, as well as the Sun Ra Arkestra. photograph used of King Khan by Matias Corral.

For me, the Tarot has been a vehicle that externalizes and unlocks the narratives we hold about our pain. Always looking to evolve my tarot studies to help my patients, I have found a new deck called the Black Power Tarot. Created by visionary musician King Khan (with drawings from Michael Eaton, under the supervision of legendary filmmaker and tarologist Alejandro Jodorowsky) the new deck "decolonizes" the historical tarot de Marseille and awakens the archetypes of black artists, alchemists, and magicians. King Khan gives us a deep journey through his own experiences with the tarot, decolonization, his musical success, and the magic of his lessons from Jodorowsky. Purchase the deck here: https://www.hellomerch.com/collections/king-khan and check out King Khan on your music source, as well as the Sun Ra Arkestra.

Have you ever received a gift that changed your life? In this final episode of the series of “The Gift”, Michael Eaton dives into what the result of the gift of Jesus Christ is to humanity.

Have you ever received a gift that changed your life? In this final episode of the series of “The Gift”, Michael Eaton dives into what the result of the gift of Jesus Christ is to humanity.

Tune in as I have a conversation with Mr. Michael Eaton about why followers of Christ should be thankful each and every day. This episode will feature his story which could make you cry, our conversation on being thankful, and what is going on in sports.

What are the hot topics in the cardiac world at the moment? This piece tackles; the need for gender balance when composing panels and building a successful event; the need to do what we know and do it well; how quality improvement benefits from simplicity; the need to keep younger practitioners involved and finally the need for a fuller engagement with the multidisciplinary aspect of cardiac care. Presented by Desiree Chappell and Monty Mythen with Sol Aronson, tenured Professor at Duke University and Executive Vice Chairman in the Department of Anesthesiology and Michael Eaton, Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York.

Message from Michael Eaton on 26/07/2020

Musician, producer, artist, and writer King Khan has led a life worth its own series of comic books. From dealing with discrimination in Canada as a kid and finding power in punk rock and psychedelic music, to being part of The Shrines, playing as part of Sun Ra's Arkestra, hanging out with Lou Reed and having Jodorowsky as his teacher and collaborator. On this episode of Red Transmissions Podcast, King Khan shares his story, tribulations and life lessons, creative process and current projects, and speaks in detail of the Black Power Tarot he developed with artist Michael Eaton, as well as the record Let Me Hang You with none other than William S. Borroughs.  Learn more about King Khan's work and productions here: https://khannibalism.bandcamp.com/ Listen to the extended interview by joining Madam Neverstop's Patreon and by doing so, supporting Red Door Magazine and Red Transmissions Podcast: https://www.patreon.com/madamneverstop Upcoming issue #23 (the Language issue) includes an article on this interview: https://reddoormagazine.com/

Louis gets on the line with Saxophonist Michael Eaton to discuss his vision around three tenors on one recording and the power duo of G Clavin Weston and Brad Jones to back it up. The self titled Tenor Triage album is out September 2019 at https://fanlink.to/TenorTriage Produced by Nick Perri & Steve Eshewsky. Engineered by Sal Mazzotta. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Michael Eaton’s compositions have a wide range of intellectual and philosophical underpinnings that gives each listener something to reflect upon. Join Michael and Lorens as he talks about artist retreat, anxiety, Bernie Sanders, and many other things, all carefully connected by his new his new albums Dialogical and Tenor Triage. (music credit: Juno, Anthropocene, Aphoristic, Machinic Eros -- by Michael Eaton; The Beat Down  -- by Tenor Triage ) twitter: https://twitter.com/doingjazz instagram:https://www.instagram.com/doingjazz/ facebook:https://www.facebook.com/doingjazz/ website: http://www.doingjazz.net/

Accordion players, saxophists, clarinet and trombone players as well as compelling singers are at the heart of this week's focus on new releases. Give a listen and then promise to support the musicians and the labels that put out this amazing music so that the prolific jazz phase we live in can go on, and possibly keep getting better... The playlist features Massimiliano Milesi, Vince Abbracciante, Jean-Christophe Cholet, Matthieu Michel, Yazz Ahmed, Gianni Coscia, Gianluigi Trovesi, Filippo Vignato, Hank Roberts, Ryan Keberle, Dalia, Francesca Gaza, CUP (Nels Cline & Yuka Honda), New Vocabulary, Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Paul Motian, Jamie Saft, Patricia Barber, David Sánchez, Maarten Hogenhuis, James Brandon Lewis, Michael Eaton. Detailed playlist at https://spinitron.com/RFB/pl/8960788/Mondo-Jazz

How to properly use music and sound effects in your show and what impact it actually has on your audience. Plus we talk about Dynamo news, Fool Us News, Shawn Farquhar's Hidden Wonders, Kyle and Mistie's secret weapon and more! Topics Covered: Dynamo, Magic As Art, Magic as Entertainment, Reddit Magic, Shawn Farquhar, Hidden Wonders, Kyle & Mistie, Brad Ross, Dean Hankey, Michael Eaton, It Factor Live, Music in Magic, Magician Tables

From bass players leading cutting edge bands, to ensembles with strings; from electronica-infused projects to tributes to Sun Ra, Count Basie and Oliver Nelson; from multi-kulti to straight-ahead. This and more on this episode of Mondo Jazz. The playlist features Dezron Douglas, Matt Mitchell, Caroline Davis, Gregory Saunier, Linda May Han Oh, Calvin Weston, The Barrence Whitfield Soul Savage Arkestra, Rajna Swaminathan, Timo Lassy, Teppo Mäkynen, Giancarlo Vulcano, Lionel Martin, Sangoma Everett, Jacopo Ferrazza, Dave Douglas, Terkel Nørgaard, Michael Eaton, Ilmiliekki Quartet, Brian Krock, SPAZA, Hae Voces, Typical Sisters, Rosa Brunello, Tyler Blanton. Detailed playlist available at https://spinitron.com/RFB/pl/8235592/Mondo-Jazz. Photo credit: Shervin Lainez.

What are the hot topics in the cardiac world at the moment? Alongside reflections on this year's annual meeting of 'The Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists' (SCA) this piece tackles; the need for gender balance when composing panels and building a successful event; the need to do what we know and do it well; how quality improvement benefits from simplicity; the need to keep younger practitioners involved and finally the need for a fuller engagement with the multidisciplinary aspect of cardiac care. Presented by Desiree Chappell and Monty Mythen with Sol Aronson, tenured Professor at Duke University and Executive Vice Chairman in the Department of Anesthesiology and Michael Eaton, Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York.

Live from 'The Society of Cardiovascular Anesthesiologists' (SCA) annual conference, 2019; the TopMedTalk team takes you right to the heart of the debate. Presented by Desiree Chappell and Monty Mythen with Sol Aronson, tenured Professor at Duke University and Executive Vice Chairman in the Department of Anesthesiology and Michael Eaton, Professor and Chair of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine at the University of Rochester, New York.

Why do we sing? The Creator made us, His creation, creative. Our worship minister, Michael Eaton, discusses why we sing in the latest sermon from the Asking for a Friend series.

Why do we sing? The Creator made us, His creation, creative. Our worship minister, Michael Eaton, discusses why we sing in the latest sermon from the Asking for a Friend series.

We catch up Davenport University Bowling Coach Michael Eaton.  Michael fills us in on his program and shares his recruiting philosophy.  We discuss goals he has for the program and why a players average in high school is not a big deal to him. Please check out all of our previous interviews and […]

Michael Eaton talks with me on a variety of topics. This episode is sponsored by Smartsheet. Show Notes: Matched Pattern SAFe. Those diagrams absolutely scream "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" and "Responding to change over following a plan" if you ask me. Perl is a language, most criticized for looking like unreadable "line noise". But that may be an unfair criticism. If you love Perl, contact me and let’s get you on the show. Elixir Blog: Same Stuff Different Day Blog: Thoughts on Writing Premise vs premises, and if you can’t remember, just say "on prem" like me :) ThroatPunchList Michael Eaton is on Twitter. Want to be on the next episode? You can! All you need is the willingness to talk about something technical. Music is by Joe Ferg, check out more music on JoeFerg.com!

Guest: Michael Eaton @mjeaton Full show notes are at https://developeronfire.com/podcast/episode-376-michael-eaton-connected-independence

Today I get the amazing pleasure of chatting with Michael Eaton who is one of the co-founders of Íko. Most of us wouldn't sign up to work 80 hour weeks on our company while finishing your degree at Cornell but that's exactly how Íko came to life.  

Michael Eaton preached at the Tribe about Living the Godly Life. He was such an instrumental gift to the body of Christ!

Living the Godly Life!

The Bible in Two Years reading plan is coming soon to the Chapel app. We're honoured that renowned theologian Dr Michael Eaton gave us permission to turn his 'Know the Bible' book into a key feature of our App. To make the most of these daily readings - and to get a notification each day to do your Bible devotional, you can subscribe to the Bible in Two Years 'push notification' on this app. This video shows you how to do that. Simply go to the settings tab on your app > Notifications > Bible in Two Years (turn this on) and every morning, at 7am we'll remind you to read your Bible!

The Bible in Two Years reading plan is coming soon to the Chapel app. We're honoured that renowned theologian Dr Michael Eaton gave us permission to turn his 'Know the Bible' book into a key feature of our App. To make the most of these daily readings - and to get a notification each day to do your Bible devotional, you can subscribe to the Bible in Two Years 'push notification' on this app. This video shows you how to do that. Simply go to the settings tab on your app > Notifications > Bible in Two Years (turn this on) and every morning, at 7am we'll remind you to read your Bible!

Behind the scenes look at how the conference was named, how one talk changed the course of the conference and what it really take to run a conference.

A message from Michael Eaton at Forest Town Church, (UK). Michael encourages us in how the resurrection is witnessed by historical evidence and the witness of the Holy Spirit.

A message from Ant Rist at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Following a visit from Michael Eaton (podcasts available entitled A Hebrews Reformation), Ant concludes his exploration of the life of Abraham in Hebrews 11 by looking at how obedience allows the promises of God to be released in our lives..

A message from Ant Rist at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Following a visit from Michael Eaton (podcasts available entitled A Hebrews Reformation), Ant continues looking at persevering faith, particularly the faith of Abraham.

A message from Ant Rist at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Following a visit from Michael Eaton (podcasts available entitled A Hebrews Reformation), Ant picks up on Hebrews 11 and begins a short series looking at what it means to live with persevering faith.

A special message from visiting speaker Dr Michael Eaton at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Michael encourages the Church toward a "Hebrews Reformation" in their understanding of the great benefits of the blood of Christ.

A special message from visiting speaker Dr Michael Eaton at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Michael concludes his teaching on the book of Hebrews and answers questions from the congregation (our apologies that some of the questions are difficult to hear on the recording).

A special message from visiting speaker Dr Michael Eaton at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Michael continues to encourage the Church from the book of Hebrews, focusing in on Hebrews 9 and the benefits of the blood of Christ.

A special message from visiting speaker Dr Michael Eaton at Forest Town Church, St Albans (UK). Michael begins by giving an overview to the book of Hebrews and calling the Church to a "Hebrews reformation".

This Landmark programme is devoted to Hitchcock's drama Blackmail. Matthew Sweet is joined by American Critic Camille Paglia, BFI curator Nathalie Morris, playwright and screenwriter Michael Eaton, and composer and film historian Neil Brand, whose specially arranged score will accompany the film for a special performance at the British Museum, 6 July 2012.