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Day Seven: A Buoyant Hope

The great fear of all energetic workers in this world is the sense that everything we do on earth is ultimately worthless. The phrase “a striving after wind” from Ecclesiastes 1:14 captures it well—constantly pursuing something that cannot be grasped. To waste your life building something that ultimately will crumble and fall back into the dust from which we all came. 

The man who wrote Ecclesiastes, the wise King Solomon, made great effort to find meaning and purpose in his labors. Especially galling to him was the concept that all his great projects—the houses and gardens and vineyards and parks that beautified his capital city—would have to be left behind when he died, and who knew whether his successor would be a wise man or a fool (2:18–19)? Death stood over all his works and mocked them all as dust in the wind (9:4-6).

If indeed there is no resurrection from the dead, if all that exists is life “under the sun,” as we read in Ecclesiastes, then life really is meaningless. But if Christ has been raised from the dead, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, then nothing we do for his kingdom is in vain. And Christ has indeed been raised from the dead! Therefore death cannot stand over our life’s works and mock them.

Rather we, the glorified saints, will see death itself thrown into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14), and we will sing the victory taunt, “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55). Paul applies this radiant truth to our lives as Christians, and he answers the depressing “realism” of Ecclesiastes: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (15:58). 

That is the greatest daily application of this heavenly meditation. It means we can be filled with a buoyant hope in our service to Christ day after day. Everything we do for the glory of God, whether great or small, famous or obscure, will be remembered in heaven and will shine for all eternity. 

Lord, I praise you because you have overcome death, sadness, fear, and sin. Help me to live and work today knowing that my work for you is not in vain because of Christ’s work on the Cross. Amen.