Ecclesiastes 2: 1-14, 24-26

From Rob Lacey's - the word on the street (Biblical verses in "streets" language)

1-3
I thought (and my gut agreed), Right, let's take this pleasure thing all the way, see if it works. But it was pointless, totally pointless. "Laughter's a waste of energy," I said. "what good does it do?" I tried wine, see if that could lighten the mood. I tried messing around - all deliberate experimentation, desparate to work out if anything was worth squat in the few years we've got on this backwater of a planet.

4-6
I buried myself if work, took on worthy projects. Built houses, set up business, made gardens and parks, planted every fruit tree you can think of.

10-11
Whatever I fancied, I bought. Whatever caught my eye, I went for it and sucked the life out of it. There was some job satisfaction in making things, some sort of pay-off for my hard work. But when I sat back and assessed it all, when I did a stocktake of all I'd made happen, I still thought, What's the point? Why chase wind? Am I any better off than I was?

12-14
Then I mulled over the word wisdom for a while, grappled with insanity and stupidity, trying to make some sense of it all. What's the next king going to do that I've not already done? I made some progress: wisdom outguns stupidity, like light overpowers darkness. Wise people use the eyes in their head, while the stupid grope around in the dark. Some progress. But then - they both die in the end, so what's the point?

24-26
What more can a guy do than eat, drink and get some sort of satisfaction from his work? But even this is subject to God handing it over, for without God around, who can eat and enjoy? If, somehow, we please God - he doles out wisdom, understanding, contentment. But if we wind him up - he makes us work our socks off just to hand it over to the ones he's taken a liking to. Pointless wind chasing.