Have you ever gotten The Thing you really wanted? Let's say you've striven, and worked, and sacrificed until that thing you always wanted really came to be...have you been there?
I have. One example is my house. I absolutely love our living room. If there's anything you should do when you decorate a house, it's to decorate in a way that makes you feel comfortable (sometimes I look at design magazines and think now who could really relax in a space like this?). Anyway, so comfort is what I tried to make my living room exude. I spent hours picking out the perfect furniture, then the perfect accents, and finally arranging it all in the space. The living room was going to be my piece de resistance. And it was! Until about a week later when I started thinking the guest room needed to be more comfortable too, and then the office, and then our bedroom. It never stops.
Or perhaps it's not "stuff" for you. A writer whose blog I love to read tells a similar story. She was always just wishing to lose those final 15 pounds so she could wear a Size 4/6 and finally feel good about herself, her skinny self. One day she finally got there...and found that even her ultimate didn't make her happy either. It felt good for a while, and then it really didn't matter anymore, and being that size certainly didn't suddenly make all her other problems go away. Of course it wouldn't, we think. But really, we think it will! We think The Thing will be the final hurdle that will make meaning and create constant contentment in this life.
This is one of the points that Solomon brings to us today:
All things are wearisome,
more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.
Here we are running this wearisome rat race, and we are worn out! Yet we keep going. We never stop looking and listening and trying to find The Thing that will make us happy and complete.
I love this part of The Problem of Life With God by Tommy Nelson: "Life is tough. Everything is wearisome. Life never resolves into peace and contentment. A man can never stop in his quest for happiness because he will never find it. Our culture is destroying themselves to fight a losing battle. They are trying to find happiness in places where it will never be found."
Another translation of "more than one can say" is "Man is not able to tell it." Nelson continues by saying, "When Solomon says, "Man is not able to tell it," he means that--by himself--man can't figure out life. Man doesn't naturally step back and realize that its impossible for a finite man in a finite world to have infinite meaning...if there is any meaning to life, there must be someone outside the system who is infinite and eternal, providing that meaning."
***
What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
It can be both an encouragement and a discouragement to know that "there is nothing new under the sun." I am encouraged whenever I face trials, because I know that I am not the only person who is dealing with a given circumstance. In fact, Jesus himself faced the trials that are common to man. The problems I have at work will happen again; the problems with my family will happen again -- these things we face under the sun are not uncommon.
The discouraging part for some might be that any great and new ideas I may have are not really new. If I have a thought that I think is new, someone somewhere has had that thought before. For example, if I think I've found the key to life in nature, well, you're among the people of India who were doing that in 2000 B.C. You think the stars hold the key? Well again, the Indians were doing that for centuries. Or mother earth? The Celts in 1400. Health and wealth? Think Rome.
We are not going to find the keys to happiness and contentment. It has all been tried. There is nothing new under the sun.
But man will never learn this:
No one remembers the former generations,
and even those yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow them.
Generation after generation will keep trying to find meaning in this life, thinking that the ones before them just weren't smart enough, advanced enough, or technologically capable of figuring it out. So they will keep trying and searching and thinking and trying some more...
...until they die.
Or until they find Jesus Christ.
He said it himself -- He is the only way, the only truth, and the only life.
He is the only one that gives meaning to this life.
Are you looking to Him and only Him for the meaning in your life today?
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