For the present hour, before the silence of Sheol

The verse sets a hand in motion against a horizon of silence. Whatever that hand finds, it is to spend itself to the full, with might, because Sheol is a place where hands are still and plans are silent. The preacher is not scolding us into productivity; he is showing us the shape of the hour. This is the only workshop we will ever be given. The light is real, and so is the dark beyond it.

The logic runs backward from the grave to the grip. If there is no work in Sheol, then the work in front of me is not a burden to survive but a gift to spend. I confess I have often held back my might, saving strength for a workshop that will never come, as if I could store up effort for a place where effort dies. The hand that finds work today is the only hand I will ever have in motion.

But the preacher's 'where you are going' is not the last word, because Christ went where we are going. He spent His might in the one work that mattered, and the Father raised Him from the place of no work. The resurrection does not soften the urgency; it changes the fear. The hand that works with might is held by the One who returned from the dark. Our labor is a share in the risen life of the One who has already passed through it.