Ecclesiastes 6:6 (NLT)
He
might live a thousand years twice over but still not find contentment. And
since he must die like everyone else—well, what’s the use?
If you ever saw the movie, “City Slickers”,
you’ll remember when Billy Crystal was speaking to a grade school class about
his life and what he does. He was very
bored and depressed with his life and this is what he shared to a very
bewildered group of kids:
“Value this time in your life, kids,
because this is the time in your life when you still have your choices. It goes
by fast. When you're a teenager, you think you can do anything and you do. Your
twenties are a blur. Thirties you raise your family, you make a little money,
and you think to yourself, ‘What happened to my twenties’? Forties, you grow a little pot belly, you
grow another chin. The music starts to get too loud, one of your old
girlfriends from high school becomes a grandmother. Fifties, you have a minor surgery-you'll call
it a procedure, but it's a surgery.
Sixties, you'll have a major surgery, the music is still loud, but it
doesn't matter because you can't hear it anyway. Seventies, you and the wife retire to Fort
Lauderdale. You start eating dinner at
2:00 in the afternoon, you have lunch around 10:00, breakfast the night before,
spend most of your time wandering around malls looking for the ultimate soft
yogurt and muttering, ‘How come the kids don't call?’ The eighties, you'll have
a major stroke, and you end up babbling with some Jamaican nurse who your wife
can't stand, but who you call mama. Any
questions?”
You laugh when you watch this part of the
movie, but what Billy Crystal’s character is describing is a modern day
Ecclesiastes view of life. Ecclesiastes
is a book full of skeptical and pessimistic verses written by a man (Solomon)
who had ignored the wisdom of God as he wrote in Proverbs and replaced it with
human wisdom that can never satisfy.
Thankfully, Ecclesiastes is unique. In the whole context of Scripture, it serves
a powerful purpose to tell and remind you that human wisdom apart from divine
wisdom will lead you to nowhere. Solomon
wrote about his efforts to find happiness and fulfillment later in his life via
intellectual pursuits (1:13-18), pleasures (2:1-11), possessions (2:12-17), and
work/productivity (2:18-23), yet all led to “striving after wind” (utter
futility) (1:17, 2:1, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26).
The world offers
promises full of emptiness; God offers emptiness full of promises. Ecclesiastes repeatedly asserts that worldly
pursuits will never provide fulfillment in life. Consider what Eccles 2:17 says: “I came to
hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless—like chasing the
wind.” Unfortunately, people don’t
believe this and spend their lifetimes pursuing worldly things that amount to
nothing.
However, the main message of Easter is the
empty tomb. The empty tomb represents
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The
resurrection of Jesus Christ means that the promises of God were fulfilled
(John 16:22), sin and death were defeated (John 14:19), and Jesus has power
over all things (Rev 3:10). Such power
means that He can fulfill His promise to you that you “might have life and have
it more abundantly” (John 10:10).
Through a relationship with Jesus Christ and allowing Him to lead your
life, your life will have purpose and meaning and will never be like what
Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes. If you
don’t believe this, then go ahead and live your life according to the world’s
ways; you will find out for yourself how vain and futile this pathway will be
and you will be sorry. Hopefully, all
who read this already know or are willing to find out how wonderful your life
can be because of your faith in the risen Christ.
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