This sixteenth year of my life has been eye-opening. Before, I'd had my plans. I'd had dreams. I'd had ambitions. But mostly, I'd just had the here and now. Maybe I realized that in a couple years everything would change. Or maybe, I just didn't want to think about it. Whatever the case, this year has brought the realization like a load of bricks that things are not always going to stay the same as they are now. I'm a junior in highschool. I'm less than two years away from possibly never living permanently at home again. This spring, some of my closest friends in the world will graduate, and leave for college. Some of them are going to be twenty minutes away, others twenty hours. And there is going to be more distance than just the physical one. They're moving on to a new life, and exciting adventures. I'm staying here, with my own, until I leave next year. I am so excited to open the next chapter of life. I am so terrified. Part of me just wants everything to stay the way it is now. This year is precious, and I don't want it to end.
But it is fleeting.
Once the wisest man in the world, Solomon recognized and verbalized this more clearly than anyone else in scripture, in Ecclesiastes. After years of walking with God, he fell to the ways of the flesh, and allowed his lust for pagan women to lead him toward their gods. Nearing the end of his life, he was forced to look back on it all, and ask a simple question: Was it worth anything?
Reading his thoughts has been eye-opening. How much of all the things we pore over and worry about actually matter? Solomon walks through several arenas of life in Ecclesiastes, searching for meaning. He begins with the virtue he is most famous for.
Wisdom is meaningless. All of us shoot for good grades. All of us strive to be more knowledgeable. And it might work. A wise person might walk around with his eyes open to the knowledge around him, while a foolish person lives his life with a blindfold. But ultimately, they both die. And on that last day of life, no amount of human knowledge in the world can save you. The same fate claims the educated as the illiterate.
Pleasure is meaningless. You can enjoy yourself all you want. You can have millions of dollars, and spend it all however you like. You can build yourself a castle even greater than you could have imagined. You can have the flashing lights and beauty. You can have the fame and prosperity of the world. But in the end, it is nothing. You can't take it with you on that final day of life, and it can give you no lasting fulfillment while you are here.
Work is meaningless. We pour everything we can into doing our best. We strive for excellence in what we do. We work hard. And in the end, it means nothing. It isonly a chasing after the wind. It can bring you nothing in the end.
Advancement is meaningless. Spend your whole life striving for something. Work your hardest. Leap above the highest hurdles, and excel above your fellow man. Win their respect. Win their adoration. Win their approval. Be the best. And you will find it empty.
Riches are meaningless. Money cannot buy anything that lasts. It is only a slaveholder to human hearts, that governs them awhile before handing them over to death at the end of their days. No matter how many things you can buy, nothing can satisfy you.
And that's not all. The voices of children are lost in injustice, and are not heard. Their tears are not seen; power is on the side of those who harm them, and there is no one to take the hit. They are trapped in a life of misery without meaning, with nowhere to turn.
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"And I declared that the dead,
who had already died,
are happier than the living,
who are still alive.
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But better than both
is the one who has never been born,
who has not seen the evil
that is done under the sun."
-Ecclesiastes 4:2-3
Life is meaningless. Knowledge is worth nothing. No amount of work can bring lasting benefit. Riches cannot buy purpose. Approval is illusory. Advancement is fleeting. Power is temporal. Evil traps the innocent, and causes a world lost in its own pursuit of worthlessness to become deaf to their cries. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity under the sun.
Unless............. there is One over the sun.
And suddenly, everything changes. The knowledge of Him is worth a thousand lives. The joys of His love satisfy any longing heart. The work of His hands make everything beautiful in its time, and the works done for His Kingdom have eternal ramifications. Advancing His name is the goal. Riches beyond imagination around found in Him. HE is the meaning.
He hears the cries of injustice, and pours out His own blood to rescue the prisoners. His love eases any pain inflicted by the Enemy. His own hand has achieved salvation. He walked among the oppressed, and knows their pain intimately. He will raise up followers to rescue them as His hands and feet to this earth. He is the Hope.
Everything is as nothing without Him. But in Him..... is everything that could ever matter.
"He has made everything beautiful in its time.
He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end."
-Ecclesiastes 3:11
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