chasing the wind

Every person eventually gets to the biggest question of them all: What’s the point? Why am I here? What is the reason for my life?

Ecclesiastes addresses that question, in kind of a discouraging way. The basic premise of the teacher’s search for the meaning of life is this:

“I applied my mind to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under the heavens. What a heavy burden God has laid on mankind! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind. (Ecc 1:13-14) . . . . So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind.” (Ecc 2:17)

I’ve felt that way. There have been times when I hated my life, because it seemed so pointless. All that work to make someone else rich, to solve someone else’s problems. I worked to earn a check, which disappeared in the time it took me to earn the next one. Life seemed like a treadmill.

But that’s because I was looking for the wrong kind of meaning. I was measuring my own significance. I expected life to be about me, and I expected that the trajectory would be always upward.

It took me a long time to get to the conclusion the teacher reaches in Ecc 2:24-25: “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?”

This was the secret that led me finally to contentment and then happiness with my own life. The joy is in the daily blessings. The joy is in the people I help with my work, the people I serve with my life. My reward is the enjoyment of the routine blessings of food, drink, companionship. At the end of the day, I sleep well because I feel good about what I did, and I enjoy the rhythm of a well-lived, faithful life.

What I’ve come to see is that serving people and being grateful for God’s Providence is the quiet life of faith scripture calls me to. It’s a contentment that’s hard to hang onto. But when I’m successful, there’s a lot of meaning to this life. And a lot of joy.