Without God Life is Meaningless

Ecclesiastes 1: 12-14 “I, the Teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.  I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.”

Today, we begin our journey into the book of Ecclesiastes, one of the most difficult books to understand in the Bible. It is filled with a spirit of hopeless despair, lack of direction, and loss of purpose and meaning in life. The book is believed to be written by Solomon, son of David and he explores a life lived almost devoid of a divine perspective and lived mostly from a selfish, self-centred, humanistic worldview.

There are a few expressions in this book that deserve special attention in order for us to understand its main themes. They are “meaningless,” “under the sun,” and “under the heavens.” While Solomon does not completely rule  God out of his life as the ultimate Creator of all things, the essence of his message is that anything we do “under the sun” and “under heaven” without an eternal perspective and without God is all meaningless.

Solomon is trying to tell us that all earthly goals and blessings pursued as an end in themselves, lead to a sense of emptiness, dissatisfaction, and despair. If nothing worthwhile is under the sun, our only hope must lie above it. If nothing visible under the heavens can satisfy, then true satisfaction comes from the one who is invisible. If the wisest man on earth finds no answer under heaven, then we must look to heaven itself for those answers.

Life on earth, regardless of everything the earth offers to man, is meaningless and devoid of true purpose if God is left out of the picture and we do not live it without an eternal perspective.

Live your life today in light of your eternity. Let God be at the center of it all and everything else will fit into the jigsaw puzzle.

 

HAVE A BLESSED DAY!