Is life meaningless?

I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.

My heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labour.

Yet when I had surveyed all that 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.    Ecclesiastes 2: 10 – 11

 There can be times when we look at our lives and wonder whether we have achieved anything worthwhile. The writer of Ecclesiastes, thought by many to be King Solomon, evaluated his life and despite all that he had achieved (and Solomon achieved more than anyone else I Kings 4: 29 - 34), he wrote that it was all meaningless. In fact he says, ‘for a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless (2:21).

 At some point in your life, you may realise you are not going to do some of the things that you thought you might do or even wanted to. These can be hard pills to swallow. Perhaps you have not got married, had children, got the promotion you expected. Perhaps an accident, disability, ill health, divorce or redundancy have stopped you achieving what you thought of as your heart’s desire. Nevertheless that does not mean your life has been meaningless or worhtwhile.

We can look at our life and draw some wrong conclusions. If we evaluate our lives by the world’s standards, very few of us will have any achievements to commend ourselves. The world only values the outwardly successful, famous or beautiful. However if we look at our lives from God’s perspective with an eternal mind set, things look very different. God values the faithful, trustworthy, honest, diligent, persevering, kind, loving, joyful, peaceful person. What matters most is not our achievements but our fruit. 

 Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy says of those people who see their life as a failure; much of the distress of these good people comes from a failure to realize that their life lies before them; that they are coming to the end of their present life, life ‘in the flesh’ is of little significance. What is of significance in the kind of person they have become. Circumstances and other people are not in control of an individual’s character or the life that lies endlessly before us in the kingdom of God.

For the Christian, this life is not all there is. This is just the start and we look forward to a life in eternity when all things will be restored. The best really is to come and we must not look at our life or anyone else’s and see it as meaningless or a failure. We have a wonderful future with God and we must always keep our eye on that truth for God has incredible things beyond our imagination here on earth ready for us when our earthly life finishes. Our life truly is going from glory to glory.

 

Reaping the fruit of righteousness

Tell the righteous it will be well with them, for they will enjoy the fruit of their deeds. Isaiah 3:10

Sometimes it can be really hard to keep going doing the right thing when all around appear to be doing whatever they like and getting away with it. However the Bible is full of references to reaping what we have sown and this verse encourages us that righteous deeds will bear good fruit. What is more this fruit is enjoyable.

If we have taken some time tending a peach tree, looking after it through the frosts, weeding round it, fertilising it, protecting the young fruit, when it does produce beautiful ripe peaches we enjoy them. It is the same with the deeds of righteousness. It may take a lot of effort through difficult times to produce it but when we do, we will enjoy the fruit of our labours.

The Bible is full of sowing and reaping and it is abundantly clear that you reap what you sow. In the natural if you plant an apple pip you will get an apple tree not a peach tree or if you sow carrot seed you will get carrots not parsnips. It is exactly the same in the spiritual. What you sow, you will reap (Galatians 6:7).  If you have sown righteously, you will reap the fruit of righteousness.

However fruit takes time to grow. It may appear that ungodly people are reaping good things from bad seed but they are not. In the fullness of time their fruit will come forth from what they have sown.  Paul encourages us: Let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Galatians 6:9 It may feel like nothing is coming from our sowing but it will.

I believe God wants to encourage and strengthen us today to not give up doing what is right even in the face of discouragement and the apparent lack of fruit and in the face of the unrighteous deeds of others which may appear to be prospering. We will eat of the fruit of our righteousness because good seed produces good fruit and God wants us to enjoy it.