“Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, NKJV). Ecclesiastes spends a lot of time on the futility of working alone for its own sake. This verse offers a counterpoint: shared labor, and shared falling, carries a different kind of reward.
There’s real honesty in this verse. It doesn’t promise you won’t fall. It promises something better than avoiding every fall: someone there to lift you back up when it happens.
If you tend toward independence, handling struggles quietly and alone, this verse is worth sitting with. Isolation isn’t a virtue Ecclesiastes celebrates here. Companionship is.
Going into this year, who’s the person who’d actually lift you up if you fell? And who are you positioned to lift up in return?