Tag: Meaning

When Life Feels Empty

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This past Sunday we kicked off a brand new teaching series called Finding Meaning. For the next few weeks we are going to walk through some highlights of the collection of wisdom in the Hebrew Bible we call Ecclesiastes. In Ecclesiastes, the wisest man who ever lived records some personal thoughts on his own efforts to find meaning in life. Through his reflections we can learn a great deal about where to find it in our own. First, though, we need a foundation from which to build this structure of ideas. That’s what we did yesterday. If we are going to find real meaning in our lives, where do we start building? Keep reading to find out.

When Life Feels Empty

So…the Patriots won the Super Bowl.  Again.  I’ll just say: They’re really good.  More specifically, Tom Brady is really good.  Bill Belichik is really good.  They managed to bring just what they needed to beat every opponent they faced in the playoffs.  Every time.  Now, the result was the most boring Super Bowl game ever, but I’ll bet you didn’t hear any complaints to that effect in the locker room after the game.  A Super Bowl win is a Super Bowl win even if it’s boring.  The thing that drives so many folks crazy about the Patriots isn’t just that they are really good.  The Los Angeles Rams and even my Kansas City Chiefs were really good this season and they didn’t drive anybody crazy.  The same goes with the New Orleans Saints.  No, the thing that gets under the skin of so many folks is that they’ve been good for so long.  This was the sixth win for Patriots and their ninth Super Bowl appearance just in the last 19 years.  In other words, they’ve been to the Super Bowl basically every other season for the whole of this millennium. 

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Morning Musings: Ecclesiastes 6:3

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“If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, so that the days of his years are many, but his soul is not satisfied with life’s good things, and he also has no burial, I say that a stillborn child is better off than he.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

While Solomon seems to promote a kind of “eat and drink for tomorrow we die,” hedonistic fatalism here, I think there’s something more afoot.  As he has surveyed the world around him, he has noticed that there are many who pursue much, but whether they obtain it or not, when the pursuit becomes their god they can no longer enjoy the fruits of their labors whether larger or small.

Better in this life is to seek to find all the enjoyment we can in the things we have, working hard to see them increase, but not to the point that work becomes the end instead of the means.  The best life will always be found in working hard, delighting fully in what we have (and among the chief ways to do that is to use it for the benefit of others), all with faithfulness to the Lord as our guide.