Good Morning Everyone,

 

Our theme for this month: Planning”

 

Our Bible verse for today: “Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:2 (NIV)

 

Our thought for today: “Satisfaction and fulfillment does not come for the good things in life, but from the Giver of life.”

 

“Our thought for today” is actually a paraphrase of something I read recently in the Daily Walk Bible. It’s an observation about what Solomon was referring to in Ecclesiastes 1:2. In frustration and despair he wrote that life seemed totally meaningless.

 

In order to fully appreciate the depths of Solomon’s despair and what prompted him to write about it, we have to understand the context of Ecclesiastes. Solomon was the king of Israel. He was the richest, wisest, most powerful man in the world. He could have, and he did have, absolutely anything he wanted.

 

He was the proverbial “poor little rich boy”. He had it all but still, he was bored with life. So in his boredom he devised a plan to experience everything life had to offer. He then spent decades trying one worldly pursuit after another including women (1 Kings 11:3 tells us he had 700 wives and 300 concubines); educational pursuits (Ecc. 1:17); pleasure (2:1); hard work (2:17); and career advancement (4:13-16).

 

The end result? He discovered that ultimately it was all meaningless. In the grand scheme of things he ended up with an empty life. Ecclesiastes was written towards the end of his life. It’s a long and sad lament from a man who realized he had wasted his life in the pursuit of things that ultimately didn’t really matter.

 

Finally, after decades of wine, women, song, and chasing after the things of this world Solomon finally discovered this: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.” (12:13)

 

Now here’s the thing we need to be sure to catch: Solomon “planned” to live like he did. He made a “decision” to go after those worldly pleasures and then He spent almost his entire adult life pursuing them. But in retrospect he found himself wishing he had put all that time and effort into developing a deeper relationship with God.

 

So, what plan do you have for your life? What is it that you are spending the days, weeks, years, and decades of your life in pursuit of? And when you reach the end of your days will you have a peaceful sense of having lived your life well or will you, like Solomon, find yourself crying out that it was all meaningless and wishing you had lived differently?

 

Think this through. Way too many people spend their lives climbing what they believe to be the ladder of “success” only to get to the top and discover the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall.

 

Learn from the lesson of Solomon. What really matters is a life lived in faithfulness to God and His commandments. As the writer said, “Satisfaction and fulfillment doesn’t come from the good things in life, but from the Giver of life.”

 

God Bless,

Pastor Jim