Monday 20 May 2013

Meaningless?


Read Ecclesiastes 1
“Meaningless! Meaningless!”
 Says the Teacher
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaning less.”
                  Ecclesiastes 1:1(niv)
The wisdom of man. Your born you labour, acquire knowledge and material wealth, bare children and die. After which your forgotten.
Just listen to any scientist talk about human life. Evolutionist state we came from the basic dry chemicals that made up the earth when it was first formed. The Christian would say we are created from the dust of the earth.
The difference however between the two is that the evolutionist would say when we die all that we were dies with us. Only that portion of our genetics that we past on to our children remains.
The Christian on the other hand acknowledges that we are more than that. That we have something that separates us from the animals an eternal soul. As well as wisdom and compassion.
An animal is intelegant. Monkeys and other animals can learn to do things even use tools but they lack compassion.
For an animal to kill another animal even one of its own kind there is no remorse or feeling it’s “just doing its thing”. They have no sense of right and wrong.
Humans however have feelings they know what is right and wrong. We have a sense there is more to life than merely existing.
We strive all our lives for a meaning to life.
In his satirical book the Hitch Hikers guide to the galaxy, Douglas Adams spoofs virtually every human institution. Particularly the institutions of religion and philosophy.
In the book earth is simply an organic super, super computer built by another computer to find out what the question to the answer to the meaning of life is.
The meaning to life having already been stated by the lesser computer to be forty-two.
People today want meaning and fulfilment in their lives. Everyone is striving for it.
A world class athlete strives for excellence in his or her sport. They get a great deal of pleasure and sense of accomplishment in not only winning but even if they don’t win doing their best.
The average person on the street tries to get fulfilment out of life by getting things or working for the “American or Canadian dream”.
Even if they get what they are striving for they still find themselves empty. Saying as the writer of Ecclesiastes states,
I have seen all the things that are done under the sun;
 all of them are meaningless ,
 a chasing after the wind.”
                                                                           Ecclesiastes 1:14
There is a meaning to life its just not what the world puts in front of us.
Within every person there is a need for God. We are made in the likeness of God. Only He can fulfil that emptiness we have.
That emptiness that the world has, is chasing the wind, gathering material wealth in an effort to end the aching in our soul.
To those people Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 
                                                                                                    Matthew 11:28-30
This is the message that we as Christians need to get out to the world around us. For it is only in Jesus that our soul can truly rest.

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