What's the Point? (A Study in Ecclesiastes: Part 2)Sample

Q's CONTINUED QUEST FOR PLEASURE

Go, Q, Go! These verses are a whirlwind of pleasure-seeking. Q is building, investing, planting, designing, maintaining, buying, amassing, growing, earning, partying, and sleeping around. He now has houses and vineyards, gardens and parks, pools and forests, slaves and flocks, silver and gold, singers and concubines. He has it all! Maybe today, he would have purchased a professional, sports team, hired the most famous architect to design a home with a million-dollar view, dated countless models and celebrities, donated to all the trendy non-profits, and had a hospital and a dog park named in his honor. Wow! Honestly, this seems like a bit much for the just-your-average-blokes among us. Or maybe we’re secretly jealous. We’d love to know what it feels like to toss aside all of life’s drudgery and just fling ourselves headlong into the pleasure of fame and fortune, red carpet events, fawning fans, personal jets, and infinity pools.

Q built his own kingdom. And “under the sun,” perhaps the most we can hope for. Work hard to have our own little kingdoms, as full of pleasure as possible. Perhaps that's the best that this life has to offer. Maybe that’s the point.

And yet, Q muses, as many celebrity memoirs have done, “then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”

Like Vanderbilt’s descendants learned, pleasure is hevel, a vapor… it does not last.

Ask Yourself: In what ways are you building your own kingdom? What have you acquired, accumulated, achieved, added, etc.? What pleasure do those things bring you? How do they leave you still wanting more?

Pause to Pray: Lord, at every turn, there are opportunities for me to strive for more and better, to be endlessly seeking satisfaction. I don’t want my life to be just a striving after wind! Show me a better way…

Take the Next Step: Before you add something to your life this week (on your schedule, to your closet, in your relationships), pause and consider your motives. Do you need this for your good and others’, or are you seeking to build your own kingdom?