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 Ecclesiastes 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 (Revelation 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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