Ecclesiastes

No notes on this one.  The book itself is a meditation of what our attitude toward life should be.  Obviously the famous passage is "To everything there is a season."  More important, I think, is the passage "There is nothing new under the sun."  We can't expect ultimate solutions to the problems and difficulties of life-- they've existed before us, they are universal.  Even our attempted solutions to the difficulties of life have been tried before.  Our attitude must be one of faithful acceptance.

Job and Ecclesiastes

Obviously, it wasn't necessary to purchase these works in a stand-alone form.  My Bible is Ignatius Press' Revised Standard Version.  I bought my copy in 2006, a few months after sponsoring James Fox's initiation into the Catholic Church.  That experience helped me recognize my own need for a fuller understanding of, appreciation for, and participation in the Catholic faith (an ongoing project in its own right).  Reviewing my Amazon history, apparently I did not purchase the Bible at the time I purchased James's gift books-- finances must have been tight.  Instead, I got around to the Bible purchase five months later-- in the same order as Mark Steyn's America Alone, of all things.