Maybe you have heard, “Life is meaningless. What’s the point? It’s all fleeting and empty and vain; we’re just racing towards death anyway.” Woody Allen declared in a 2014 interview, “The truth of the matter is, when you think of it, every 100 years, there’s a big flush, and everybody in the world is gone. And there’s a new group of people. And that gets flushed, and there’s a new group of people. And this goes on and on interminably — and I don’t want to upset you — toward no particular end, no rhyme or reason.” This is NOT true for people who know and follow Jesus.
The writer of Ecclesiastes felt the same way as Woody does. Dismally he declared, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” Work is pointless. Wisdom is pointless. Stuff is pointless. Relationships are pointless. We gain nothing. Why bother?
The answer lies in knowing the Lord. The writer confidently concludes, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his work. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God.” God is in charge and in control, He is in heaven and you are on earth; why question Him? Prosperity and enjoying life can only be rightly understood in relationship to God, “for man has nothing better under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his work through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.”
At the end of the day, life without God is meaningless, but if we fear God and walk in His ways, there is where true meaning and joy can be found. Meaningful! Meaningful! Life is meaningful because all is ordered by an eternal, sovereign, and purposeful God. Therefore, we should fear Him and rejoice in what He has given us to do and to have.
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