It’s only Tuesday and the emotional rapids of the week have pitched and plummeted the Nelson family. We have started September with all 4 kids in the house, which is super sweet for this mom. We have celebrated a big win over an archrival in volleyball and whooped over our son’s football highlight films. My husband has had a productive workweek and the youngest got an A on her first high school test. We have also had one kid run a fever, one suffer FOMO, two engage in an infuriating, ridiculous and relentless quibble and a dog that’s battling a stomach bug. Mealtime is supposed to be the sweet, end of the day, highlight for the American family, but when mom spends hours of time, buckets of creativity and a good portion of her budget to put a healthy and delicious meal on the table…. and her kids turn up their noses at anything green… and pick every tomato off their plate… and slide it to the floor so the stomach-sensitive dog can gobble it up, this mom wants to bow out.
I know many of you identify and empathize. Our days are repetitive: Back to work, back to school, more projects, more bills, more homework, more laundry, more ballgames, more tears and interlaced are paychecks and celebrations, triumphs and bouts of unrestrained laughter.
It was a precious comfort this morning to read how wise King Solomon felt exactly the same way. Near the end of his life, and inspired by the eternal Holy Spirit, he filled us in on his pursuit for understanding the meaning of life.
Absorb with me some of his musings from Ecclesiastes 1:
2 “Everything is meaningless,” 4 “Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. 5 The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries around to rise again.” 8 “Everything is wearisome beyond description. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how much we hear, we are not content.” 9 “History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before.” 11 “We don’t remember what happened in the past, and in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.” 17” So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I learned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.”
Solomon was successful and wise. He was a Good King with a great reputation. He had a beautiful home and garden. He made mistakes and had to learn from them. He had kids that reflected well on him and kids that brought shame to his name. Solomon was able to indulge in the pleasures that life affords, and he was also able to find satisfaction in hard work; he realized that all of it is meaningless.
Our lives are just as meaningless. When life is defined by the daily grind and the mountain of laundry is reborn every 3rd day, and the schedule is crammed with 90 minute ball games, and we find happiness in interludes of successes, pleasures and escapes, we are a sad lot.
In His superior wisdom, Solomon concluded that we cannot truly enjoy anything apart from God. It is God who gives wisdom, knowledge and joy. (Ecc 2:25-26) He understood that all the simple pleasures in our wisp of time on earth, and all the roses and thorns and accomplishments, opportunities and major life events are also gifts from an eternal God. Do you, like I do, forget this? I get so entrenched in the temporary that I convince myself that the stuff on my horizontal horizon is the most important. My view is skewed by the temporary. The laundry, and homework and kid-raising and road-paving and people managing stuff is seasonal. There is a time for all of it and in the day it is given, it is to be rejoiced over and determinedly attended to, but we must remember that it is a gift. It has been given for a temporary time from an eternal God. For joy to abound, the eternal must be our goal. After listing all the experiences life has to offer, Solomon shares the secret. He learned that we should accept all that God puts before us as a gift and that the gift deliveries are always perfect in their timing, but if our happiness doesn’t find it’s core in the giver, we will live a desperate and exhausting existence.
Oh dear friends, rejoice! Whatever life throws at you is a seasonal gift. It is fleeting, but the one who gave it is forever. Have a great day!
“What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God. And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear Him. What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.” Ecc 3:9-15 (NLT)