Meaningless, he says
The Teacher in chapters 1 & 2 emphasises that it is all meaningless. The opening statement in chapter 1 spells it out:
“Meaningless!
Meaningless!” says the Teacher
“Utterly
meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
As a teenager, from a broken home,
filled with hurt and anger, I pondered the concept of meaninglessness, for that
very opening spoke about my situation. I had told my mother I want nothing to
do with her; my father asked me to leave his house. I knew Jesus existed, but I
did not want anything to do with Him. I lived in a place of pain. Alcohol was
my safe place, my refuge. When I dwelt on the concept of meaninglessness, I was
in that space; suicide was the ultimate solution. I planned to go down that
path. To bring the story home, God intervened, and I met with Him personally.
He took me through the steps of salvation, step by step. For me it was as if I
was having an audible conversation with God. With having Jesus in my life, I know
that life is not meaningless, in fact, it is full of meaning.
In chapter 1, we see that the Teacher
expresses that the world merely goes around and around. We are born, we age, we
die. In the end we have gained nothing; we will be soon forgotten. Furthermore,
we can have all the wisdom; we can spend an enormous amount of time and energy
gaining wisdom and knowledge, but as the Teacher says: “… but I learned that
this, too, is a chasing after wind.”
Chapter 2 takes us down the
road of spending time indulging in pleasures. The Teacher says he spent
time in the pursuit of pleasure, denying himself nothing. Pride became
evident in his life. It was all self-driven. He looked at what the fools do,
those that are not wise, and realised that wisdom is most certainly better than
folly. The resultant thinking, however, led him to the conclusion that the fate
of the fool is the same as the fate of the wise.
Work and building up for the
future was an absolute waste of time. The internal debate that he had was about
leaving everything he toiled for to those that have not worked for it. The
Teacher’s thinking led him to make this comment: “This too is meaningless and a
great misfortune.”
However, a bit of Godly wisdom comes into his thinking.
“A man can do nothing better
than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work.
This too, I see, is from the
hand of God, for without Him,
who can eat or find enjoyment?
To the man who pleases Him,
God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness,
but to the sinner He gives the
task of gathering and storing up wealth.”
Chapter 2:24–26
Do we not have this tendency of collecting and storing up material things? The bigger, the better. The more expensive, the greater the desire to show it off. The world system has pushed this upon us. The advertisers drive the concept of ‘It’s about you, your desires, your pleasures.’ We want, and want and want, more. We strive to fill ourselves with as many pleasures as we can find, even to the extent of enjoying so-called designer drugs. We simply strive to satisfy ourselves.
There is nothing wrong with working hard, nothing wrong with earning a good salary, and nothing wrong with being wise and prudent. God has designed it such that these are things we should be doing in the normal course of living our lives. The problem clearly is that if all of this is done to the exclusion of God’s input in our life, then what the Teacher says is true: “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless!”
I do not want my existence to be meaningless; I want to fulfil the purposes of God to the best of my ability in the time that He has given me to live on this earth. I want to know that I will have eternal life with Him.
Please, take the time to consider that which is important to you, and
perhaps realign your thinking to what should really be important.