Mist, vapour and smoke

Have you ever spent time in the mist?

From afar mist and clouds look impressive, substantial and beautiful. Maybe you’ve passed through them in an aeroplane, or climbing a mountain, or in a cloud forest. Inside the mist you can lose your bearings, sound can be distorted and the landscape changes. It can feel all-encompassing, uncontrollable and disorientating.

But when you try to hold or touch mist, the reality becomes clear: it is insubstantial and transient, you can’t hold it: it’s like it’s not actually there, a vapour. It may appear solid, but when you try to grab onto it, there’s nothing there.

I’ve been reading Ecclesiastes in the Bible recently. The author of Ecclesiastes writes about Solomon who was incredibly successful, rich and wise. The most powerful king Israel have ever had. Yet Ecclesiastes determines all life’s successes as ‘hevel’ which could be translated as vapour or smoke or mist. Work, wealth, honour, self-indulgence, even wisdom, Solomon’s most famous success: all vapour.

Vapour is here today and gone tomorrow, like the clouds. You can’t catch it or keep it or bottle it up. It is passing, transitory, it doesn’t last and doesn’t satisfy.

Ecclesiastes describes the best that life has to offer, the things that we chase after as vapour, or in other translations as vanity or meaningless. A chasing after the wind. Hevel.

This world and all its trappings, treasures and treats are transitory, passing, like the mist, like a vapour. Although they can feel so permanent, all-encompassing and everlasting; they will pass away like the mist on a hot day.

But the Bible teaches of a deeper reality that is much more substantial and long-lasting than this vapour that constitutes the life we know. A spiritual reality; life after death. The physical reality that we now live in is, in reality, a mist. And the spiritual reality, that we cannot actually see or feel, is, in fact, much longer lasting and real. Hard to get your head round.

The conclusion of Ecclesiastes is that one day God will clear the hevel away and bring order and clarity. This life is temporary and fleeting and we can stop trying to control it, stop worrying and accept the mistiness. Everything in life is out of our control, like the mist. However, we can enjoy the simple, good things of life, like family and friends or a sunny afternoon. Experiencing and enjoying life as it is. More than this, we can trust God who can guide us through the mist and outlasts it.

Can we see through the mist to what is lasting?

*Thanks to the teaching of Andrew Wilson for the inspiration for this, as well as the Ben Folds Five song ‘Smoke’. Give it a listen, go on.