When it seems like evil, suffering and tragedy has won out do you ever wonder what the meaning of life is and what’s the point? Likewise, do you struggle to know what you do matters? To feel like you are making an impact and are not just spinning your wheels or going through the motions of life?
This was the question the 11-year-old daughter of one of my friends asked this past weekend. It’s a good question. In fact its a question all of humanity wrestles with and one we should consider for ourselves and dialogue with our kids about.
What first popped into my mind is Ecclesiastes 1 where Solomon is trying to make sense of a life that seems meaningless and futile.
“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes,but the earth remains… All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.” Ecclesiastes 1:2-9
This coming from a future king who had everything in terms of power, wealth and intellect even before his ascent to the throne. Yet, if you continue through the next chapters, you read his frustration in realizing none of it delivered the lasting happiness and contentment he longed for.
Isn’t this true of you, too? Haven’t you tried to stuff the ‘soul hole’ with countless temporal things only to find the hole keeps expanding and something more is needed to fill it? Try as we might with each god replacement we are left emptier, more desperate and depressed than before.
“He has put eternity into man’s heart…” Ecclesiastes 3:11b
Nothing in this world will ever satisfy because we were made for something other. Something more. Something bigger. Something better.
Jesus’ words in Mark 8:34-35:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.”
Contrary to what many think, Jesus is not demanding you give up worldly things or trying to motivate you to obedience out of guilt. What Jesus teaches is what it means to truly follow him as a disciple. And, to be his disciple means finding life in him.
Another way of saying this is to find our identity wrapped up in his or to ‘get our story straight‘!
Trying to find our identity or find ‘life’ in anything other than him will actually cause us to “lose” our life. Nothing else can ever truly satisfy nor is anything else big enough or valuable enough to define us and give us the secure identity we crave. So if we continue striving to achieve or maintain whatever it is we think can give life, we will be constantly disappointed and likely depressed. Emptiness. Vanity of vanities.
Therefore, Jesus calls us to deny seeking an identity in this way. But to instead find life by knowing who he is for us. When we get that he not only came to identify with us, but took our identity and gave us his, things change.
Things change when we see God is for us and with us and views us as is righteous heirs. Things change when we view life through Godward focused lenses and not the narrow lenses of self. Things change when we become so captivated by who he is for us that worship and obedience follow as a heart desire instead of an obligation. He now gives meaning and purpose to the otherwise meaningless and empty.
When I view life in this way, every encounter, connection and situation is by him and through him and for him. I am not my own. I am living for something more glorious and serving a purpose beyond my own little realm.
What we conclude about the meaning of life will be shaped by our theology of God, whether we believe in him or not. And with a heart bent toward eternity stuck in the here and now, I find great hope knowing there is One so much greater than me who gives meaning and life.
Believing he has given me a path to walk in motivates me to live outside of myself by looking for how and where I can be the hands and feet of Jesus to another. Not out of duty, but out of delight. I now can find purpose in the mundane and beuaty in the ashes as I trust a broader, more beautiful picture is being painted than what is visibly seen in the muck and mess of this world.
