“For that which happens to the sons of men happens to animals. Even one thing happens to them. As the one dies, so the other dies. Yes, they have all one breath; and man has no advantage over the animals: for all is vanity. All go to one place. All are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.”

Ecclesiastes 3:19-20

Solomon shows us the commonality between us and the animals. As they have physical life, so also be we. They lose their lives and their breath fails and they die, and so also with us. We are no different from the animals in this regard. We have nothing to stop us dying more then animals and we must realise that God is in charge of life and death and not ourselves.

We trust Him completely in this, for we must. He is the God who we must stand before and answer for our lives. Our lives are in His hands, and he decides when we live and die. God orders all the things in our lives in conformity with His holy will and He works all things out for the good of those who love Him. We were made by Him and for Him and for His glory, and all that we are belongs to Him. To keep striving for more and more is folly, even the animals know that. God cares for them and feeds them every day from His hand.

“See the birds of the sky, that they don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns. Your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you of much more value than they?”

Matthew 6:26

God’s people are worth much more than animals, and His care for us is so deep and profound that He works out His will in our lives with great care and love. God’s will for our lives is according to His tender care for us personally, and not in the hands of other people.

He is working out His purposes in your life and He will bring your life to full fruition and show the wonder of His glory through the circumstances of your life. No one can hinder the work of God, or put a stumbling block in His way. Even Satan cannot hurt or tempt God’s people, unless God allows it.

“in whom also we were assigned an inheritance, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who works all things after the counsel of his will;”

Ephesians 1:11

Our inheritance is not in this world, but in heaven, kept for us by the power of God. No one can touch it or deny us the right to have it. Animals do not have this right, nor do people who refuse God. We might die physically like the animals, but we live eternally after we die.

Without the Lord it is all futile, vanity, a chasing after the wind. We can never know it, or trust it, but only in the person of Christ can we know true freedom and forgiveness and an eternal hope of heaven.

When all flesh dies, it returns to the rot of the dust of the ground, but not the soul. The soul of the human goes to God and He will judge their lives. The soul is the part of us that can relate to God, and needs to be made alive to Him through faith in Jesus. Those who are safely hidden in faith in Christ, enter into their eternal inheritance, but those who do not believe and have no salvation in Christ, face eternal death. We do not die like animals, and our lives don’t need to be futile. Solomon is showing us the futility of life without God and the hopelessness of a body without soul. We must remember our Creator and put our hope in Him.