We live in a world that often feels spiritually disorienting, where what we believe about justice and goodness doesn't match what we experience daily. This exploration of Ecclesiastes 8:10-17 tackles what we might call 'spiritual motion sickness'—that nauseating disconnect between our expectations of how the world should work and the reality we encounter. Just as physical motion sickness occurs when our eyes and inner ear send conflicting signals to our brain, spiritual motion sickness happens when wicked people prosper while the righteous suffer. The passage confronts us with uncomfortable observations: hypocrites praised in religious spaces, evil deeds going unpunished, good people treated as if they were wicked. Our culture offers two inadequate responses—empty sentimentality that ignores real pain, or crushing cynicism that sees only darkness. But the Teacher in Ecclesiastes offers a third way: wisdom that looks up to the horizon of God's ultimate justice while still enjoying the gifts of life here and now. This isn't naive optimism; it's resurrection realism. We're reminded that in Christ, we have a horizon shaped like a cross, where God entered our suffering, defeated death, and initiated a kingdom where all things are being made new. The cure for our spiritual motion sickness isn't having all the answers—it's keeping our gaze fixed on the North Star of God's promises, trusting that the arc of the moral universe truly bends toward justice, even when we can't see it clearly in the darkness.
