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Life Isn’t Meaningless
Ecclesiastes 1:14
Our verse for today is Ecclesiastes one verse 14, which says,
I have seen all things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (Ecclesiastes 1:14)
I read a story the other day about a man who had always dreamed of hiking through the Grand Canyon, so he saved up money. He got himself in shape. He bought that ticket to Arizona, and off he went. He began his hike. It was a three day hike, going from the top of the Grand Canyon, down into the bottom and up through the top. It was a challenging hike, but he was ready to do it.
Day one of the hike went well. Everything went exactly as he had planned. Then day two there was a challenge. You see, there had been a torrential rain storm that had washed out the trail that he had planned on taking, and suddenly he found himself lost. Very lost. He spent days out in the desert, and after time began to pass, he began to have hallucinations. Began to see mirages. He would see what looked to be rescuers coming to rescue him. See helicopters in the sky that were not there. He saw a table set with the most delicious food. But of course, none of it was there.
Thankfully, a few days later he was rescued and he was taken to the hospital and quickly released. He went home and his family had prepared a beautiful meal for him. It was almost like Thanksgiving time all over again. As he sat there and looked at the food, he thought to himself, man, I really wish I could go back to the desert and eat that food that I saw there.
That would be absurd. That food that he saw in the desert wasn’t real food. It wasn’t tangible. It couldn’t help him or give him life. But the food here on the table was exactly what he needed. It was life giving. It was real.
That seems like an odd example, but that’s kind of what this text here in Ecclesiastes is talking about. When it talks about things under the sun being meaningless. Meaningless is an interesting word. A lot of translations use the word smoke. Well, what does that mean? That everything is smoke? We stop and think about it, smoke looks like something that is there, something that is tangible, something you can reach out and grab. But when you try to grab it, it’s gone. It slips between your fingers. It’s not really there. And that’s how a lot of things in life are. They seem to be important, but when we try to cling to them, there’s really nothing to cling to. But so often we’re tempted to try to cling to those things, whether it be money or happiness or wealth. These things that seem important, these things that seem as if they can give us life and everything we need when we cling to them, they let us down. They slip between our fingers.
The author of Ecclesiastes knows that there is something better. There is something that we can cling to, something that like that real food is life giving and that is Christ. We cling to Christ and Him crucified, and that is real, and that’s tangible. And not only is it not smoke that slides through our fingers, but it’s a foundation. The Bible tells us a firm foundation on which we can stand and be built up. What a beautiful thing we have in Christ. So life isn’t meaningless, but life is temporary. It’s fleeting. And in Christ we have meaning and eternal life. Amen.
