Chasing After The Wind

Do you ever feel restless and dissatisfied? Are you burnt out and disillusioned with life? Do you wonder WHY you feel this way? What is the real meaning of LIFE?

Do you sometimes feel that happiness is like “chasing after the wind”? You can feel it as it passes but trying to catch it or keep hold of it is simply not possible. Why is it that our good feelings only temporary? Why is it that no matter how much we achieve or accomplish the good feelings associated with them simply don’t last? Why is it that we stay on this treadmill in search of a feeling that we grasp momentarily but then eventually slips from our reach?  Will we one day take a look back and see how we spent our time, money and resources and decide that these, too, were chasing after the wind?

Where are the answers to all of these questions that elude us? They can be found in the book of Ecclesiastes. This book was written by King Solomon, the richest man to ever walk the earth. He is the one and only trillionaire of this world. He was the King of Jerusalem and lived over 3,000 years ago. He had everything! He was the one person in the Bible who had wisdom, power, riches, honor, reputation, wisdom and God’s favor. He had everything that you and I have been taught to seek! Isn’t it ironic that it is “he, the man who had it all” that discussed the ultimate emptiness of all this world has to offer? He starts out in Ecclesiastes 1 saying…” Meaningless! Meaningless! Says the teacher. “Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless!”

How could a man who had it all feel this way? The reason for Solomon writing so pessimistically is based on his life experience. Near the end of his life, he looked back over everything he had done, experienced and accomplished and concluded that most of it seemed meaningless. He wrote that “he had tried everything and achieved much, only to find that nothing apart from God, made him happy.” No pleasure or happiness is possible without God. Without God, satisfaction is a lost search. He wrote this book to warn you and I of making the same mistakes he had. He warned that if we tried to find meaning in our accomplishments rather than in God, we would never be satisfied. He warned that no matter how much we achieved everything would eventually become wearisome and empty. King Solomon reigned during the “Golden Age” of Israel but he wanted people to know that prosperity and success don’t last long. King Solomon tells us that above everything we should strive to know and love God. He is the only one who can give us wisdom, knowledge and true joy. The cure for our emptiness and our loneliness cannot be found in people or things of this world. He has placed a God shaped hole in each of us that only He can fill. Because this life is short, we need wisdom far greater than what the world can give us. Solomon’s goal was to show each of us that the pursuit of worldly accomplishments and possessions are meaningless.

Are you restless and dissatisfied with your life? Like Solomon, perhaps you should take a good hard look at your life and see how very important it is to pursue God above and beyond all other things. Perhaps, God is asking you to rethink your purpose and direction in life just as Solomon did. What better person to take advice from than a person who has ALREADY been where we are trying to go?  He has already run this race! He concluded that true wisdom can only be found in God, and that true happiness only comes from pleasing Him.  His entire life can be viewed as a human experiment…. man’s search for true meaning.  Like many in the world today, he first started by pursuing pleasure. He amassed wealth, wives and influence. He was the most popular person in Jerusalem. Yet none of these things brought him lasting satisfaction and fulfillment.  He was always left empty and dry. He says in Ecclesiastes 2:11 “Yet when I surveyed that all my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun.”

Think about it…here is a man who had everything a person could want yet in verse 2:17 he tells us he hated his life. What happened? His accomplishments left him empty and sour because he pursued them as a means to personal satisfaction. He was alone in the enjoyment he received because it was all self serving. He was all about me, me, me! His life shows us how important our motives and our goals are. If our motive to serve God and others then we will experience a full life. If our motive is to simply serve ourselves we will end up like Solomon.

If God is not your foundation for all that you build, all that you are living for is meaningless. We can see this theme running rampant throughout the Entertainment industry. Why are so many of our young people enchanted and enthralled with celebrities who are “chasing the wind?” On the outside, these folks seemingly have it all. Yet on the inside they are a wreck as demonstrated by their broken lives. They are in hot pursuit of all of the things that the world falsely tells us will bring us happiness yet they are NOT fulfilled. They are not satisfied. They fall into drugs, alcohol and strings of bad relationships because their pursuit of pleasure, wealth and success are ultimately disappointing. These things do not have the power to fulfill. Nothing but God can fill the emptiness and satisfy the deep well of longing in our restless hearts.

So, what IS the purpose of life? What did Solomon conclude after a long and wealthy life? He concluded that without God being the center of your life it is ALL meaningless! Purpose in life starts with WHOM we know, not what we know or how good we are. It is impossible to fulfill your God given purpose unless you know God, revere God and give Him first place in your life. The cure for our emptiness is to center on God. When we do this we will enjoy life in ways we never knew possible. We will experience joy that surpasses all human understanding.  It is a joy that this world simply can’t touch. We will begin to enjoy the gifts that God has given us, not just what we accumulate. Once you find God your search stops because He is your destiny! HE is what you’ve been searching for!

God Bless You!

In Christ, Sherry :-)

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