30 Days of Thanks - Day 20 - Ecclesiastes

It may be one of my favorite books in the Bible due to its sheer honesty about the human condition. An existentialist treatise written millennia before the births of the greats associated with that philosophical label, Ecclesiastes lets us see that the entirety of our lives - our works, struggles, successes, failures, etc. - is meaningless when we work toward self-fulfillment. By self-fulfillment I mean what the Teacher says in 4:4, "And I saw that all labor and all achievement spring from man's envy of his neighbor. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind." Our inability to enjoy what we have and have been given robs our lives of beauty and meaning with which they were created. Our greed and covetous ambition makes us like the dog who, seeing the dog with a bone in his reflection in the river, drops his bone to chase after the empty image. It ends with a message far from the expected conclusion of a king. It does not suggest striving for glory or gain or good name or victory but simply . . .

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.

For God will bring every deed into judgment,

including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil.

-Ecclesiastes 12:13-14

Because our lives really are pointless unless they are pointing to something else much greater than they.