Meaningless, Meaningless!!

 

At a recent elder's meeting at our church, Mark Wallerstedt commented that he had been reading through the book of Ecclesiastes and that it was kind of depressing. I can understand why he says that, because a common refrain in the book is that everything is vanity or meaningless. The teacher cycles through a number of areas where he has tried to find meaning, including hard work, money, partying, women, and even wisdom. In the end, he concludes that everything under the sun is meaningless. Ultimately, you live and work here on earth but eventually, you die so what does it matter?

As I write this, I am currently preparing for two funerals for people who died relatively young so this is not an abstract concept for me. I am talking to their friends and family, and a question that commonly comes up at this time is did their lives have meaning? At the same time, it is good to ask ourselves, does my life have meaning? Eventually everything under the sun goes away including ourselves so what does it matter. I have seen many people come to funerals not just with great sorrow, but a depression because they are faced with the meaninglessness and hopelessness of their own lives. 

But I do not think that the teacher of Ecclesiastes intends us to end with this nihilistic (meaningless) understanding of life. Instead, he highlights the phrase "under the sun" to help us understand that if build our lives on anything that is simply material then it will go away. Therefore, we need to look above the sun or above the material world to the creator of the world for our purpose. Only when we understand ourselves and the world from God's perspective can we know that we were created for more than just this life. We were created for eternity with God. He desires us to live every day with an eternal purpose, knowing that no matter how easy or hard our life is right now, we can live with hope.

Jesus came to make the way for us to have that eternal life. He says, in John 5:24 "Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life." He came to die on our behalf so that we can have a restored relationship with God because our sin had separated us from Him. When we believe in Jesus as Savior and Lord, then all the aspects of our lives can be lived with an eternal purpose.

One of the people who died this week was my friend Ryann. Ryann died young from our perspective, but Ryann expressed very clearly to me that he believed in Jesus. Therefore, I believe that he is with Jesus now and has in fact passed from death to life. His life here was not meaningless, because he lived in such a way to point above the sun to the One who created everything and declared that is was very good. If you believe in Jesus as our Savior, you too can know that your life has eternal meaning.