Life is meaningless?
Hey, it’s been a while. I think I’ve got all the syptoms of new blogger apathy, but in reality I’ve just been crazy busy.
I spent the first week of July working 12-14 hour days at our fireworks booth, took a few days off, and then came back to work only to head up to 2 weeks of camp at Hume Lake. I spent the first week at Ponderosa and the second at Wildwood, and both weeks were amazing (also, be sure to check the Wildwood blog for lots of updates, the inside on inside jokes, tortilla slaps, and general craziness).
Since being at camp, I’ve been reading a lot. After a 2 month stint in Proverbs, I’ve just gotten into Ecclesiastes. It’s phenomenal. If you’re pessimistic, you’ll love Ecclesiastes.
Although authorship of the book is debated, many agree that it was written by Solomon, most likely at the end of his life. He discusses all that he has seen in life and how all the pursuits of this life are meaningless.
Solomon was the wisest man who lived, had innumerable riches, and had somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 lovers (that’s counting both wives and concubines). He had his fair share of good times in life.
Yet he says that it’s all meaningless. In the ESV translation, he says that everything is vanity, meaning excessive pride in oneself. The Hebrew behind the word denotes vapor, as if to say that chasing after any real happiness or contentment in this life is like chasing vapor. You might see it or even feel it, but it’s fleeting and you’ll never really attain it.
There are things that are worthwhile. He notes that enjoying what God has given us is good. But you have to really know God and understand that it is from him and that it is returning to him in order to really experience any kind of joy.
Only the things that are eternal are worth focusing on. Only the things which have an echo in eternity are worth putting any effort into or worth really giving our lives to.
Jesus is worth it. Telling others about him and living for him seem to be the ony things that I find that are not meaningless, vanity, vapor.
A student of mine who had graduated from high school approached me on Sunday after church and asked me if I remembered a certain handout that I had given out to students last summer. The handout was about happiness and contentment and how we desperately long for those. I told her I did, and she showed me a copy of it that I given her last summer, folded up and dog-eared. She recounted to me how God had really spoken to her heart and gotten her focus right. She had held on to the paper because it had really opened her eyes and had helped her realize that what she was living for was meaningless.
It really struck me because I had forgotten all about it. But she had had this Ecclesiastic-like moment where she realized that she was living for the wrong things, investing her life in temporary and stupid things.
May we all be so lucky as to have those moments where God opens our eyes to what is really important and what is simply fading away.
Below I’ve included the handout for you to read.
May you find happiness.
May you find frustration and discontent when you chase worthless ideas and things so that you may come back to God, back to the one who made you.
What makes us unhappy? What are sources of unhappiness in our lives?
When we come upon rough times in life, points in life where we know that we’re going to have to be strong or courageous, or where we know we’re going to be stressed, is it natural for us to trust God to handle those things or to take them on ourselves?
Why?
What about the everyday little concerns, like beauty or value or coolness or worth? Do we go to God with those things? Or do we try to answer them ourselves?
What would it look like (what would be look like or what would situations look like) if we actually gave those things over to God instead of trying to figure it out ourselves?
What do you covet? Money? Video Games? Clothes? iPhones?
Maybe it’s not something material, like happiness. Or peace. Good looks. Skinniness. Bigger muscles. Bigger brains. A mom. A dad. Someone to love you.
Do we believe God will provide these things?
Why can’t we just be happy with what we have?
Some people use the expression “keeping up with the Jones’s”. Do you have this tendency? Job 5:2 says that “resentment kills a fool and envy slays the simple.” Essentially, if you’re chasing after what someone else has, it’ll be the death of you. What does your neighbor have that you wish you had?
What are your limits in chasing that thing?
Answer this question honestly: What happens if you never get that one thing, or you never get it in the way you imagine? I’m not talking about whatever you just said aloud, I’m talking about the thing that you’re thinking about right now that you’re too scared or ashamed to share about.
What if you never get that thing?
Has God let you down?
Will you or can you still love Him?
When you really think about it, do you need that one thing? I mean, do you absolutely need it or you’ll die?
Maybe it’s more like something you want?
Or maybe it’s just something that’s a status sign.
Do you really know what you need? Not just food, water, clothes, but the big things, like the kind of person you should marry or what you should do with your life. Do you really know what it is that you need?
Who should you look to for answers?
Here’s the real question: Do you really believe that God will provide for you, that he’ll care for you?
Don’t just say yes. Do you really believe that? In your heart, do you really believe that God will take care of everything that you need?
Do your actions give evidence to what your answer was? What I mean is, do you say that you’re going to trust God but then worry about how you’ll get this thing or that? Do you say you believe in God’s love but then you look for love from all kinds of other sources, all kinds of other people?
Maybe our unhappiness lies in the tendency we have to compare ourselves with our neighbors. Maybe true happiness, true contentedness comes from accepting who we are, who God has made us to be. Proverbs 14:30 says “A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones.”
And so instead of being upset by what we don’t have, or being driven to get what we see that others have, we can use that time and energy to focus on what’s more important.
We’ll have time to care for others, time to show love to people who need it.
Maybe we’ll find that our thoughts won’t be so selfish and self-centered, but instead they’ll be about how we can help make the world better for other people.
Maybe over time you’ll see how coveting what others have never makes you happy. You chase after dreams, and if you ever acquire that thing, that object, it will only give you temporary satisfaction. Ecclesiastes 4:4 says that a man who envies is like one who chases after the wind. You might see it or even experience it, but you’ll never catch it.
Maybe you can choose here and now to avoid that path, to avoid the heartache and the pain that come from chasing empty dreams, and instead you can focus on what’s here and now. Or more importantly, you can focus on who is here and now.
When you reach this line, if Tim hasn’t called us to join small groups, start thinking about what it is that you have chased, what things you have desired. Think about whether it’s worth it to continue to keep your focus on those things.
i like the book of which king solomon writes that everything is pointless
i have written a song based on this passage in the bible
it makes the person question the reason why we live for God and why it is that we search the world looking for something new to unlock
the fact that the waves keep crashing and the roses die and bloom again
a beauty onced unlocked but yet we are looking for wonders anew
where can we find them but only in God
since this world has nothing but pointless things we assume have nothing to give us