Finding True Meaning in the Meaningless

Key Verse: “Absolute futility,” says the Teacher. “Everything is futile.” Ecclesiastes 12:8

As I cleaned out the crisper drawer in my refrigerator, it reminded me how temporary and fleeting everything in life is.  The fruit I placed in my refrigerator was crisp, firm, and full of flavor. Just a few days later it was wilted, brown, and no longer edible.  

A stark reminder that “everything is futile,” just as Solomon penned in Ecclesiastes 12:8.

It also makes me stop to think how many things I have gotten so bent out of shape over things that didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. Stuff I had worried about and stressed over that most days I forgot about by the next day. 

My dad’s birthday would have been this week if he hadn’t succumbed to cancer. I have spent some precious time reminiscing. Time remembering special moments spent with this special man that God shared with my family. 

Memories of hunting, fishing, skeet shooting, nights spent at the skating rink, and evenings listening to him tell his stories and play his mandolin. Sunday mornings of him giving the word in Sunday service and saying grace at our family table.

I took the time to feed my dad his last full meal nights before he passed. He enjoyed every bite. A sweet memory that makes me think aboutoutout how many things in this world we will be doing unaware that it is for the last time. 

One last time to do the seemingly never ending laundry, take out the trash and empty the dishwasher. The last time to pick up toys after a child, clean the fingerprints left on a glass door, drive through the school pick-up line and tell them to clean their room and do their homework. 

One last time to touch a loved one’s hand, hug them, laugh together, or one last time to push a wheelchair. 

Sometimes our hearts ache to hold on to something permanent and unchanging.  However, things in this life were never meant to truly satisfy us.  But we can spend so many endless hours trying to make the things in this life do what they were never meant to do. 

I have to stop and thank my God for being the one constant source of meaning and hope in my life. A life that can easily be filled with what Solomon penned in Ecclesiastes 12:8 as “Absolute futility,” said the Teacher. “Everything is futile.”

I am so blessed to know that the relationship I have with The Lord is the one thing that will never change, never grow old, never stop having meaning in my life, and never be the last time. 

So, I will pause today and just let some things go.  Breathe in the gift of air in my lungs and exhale the peace and contentment that God has poured into me today. 

Maybe it is called growing up. Better yet maybe it is just God has spent a little extra time with his daughter this week. He was sweetly answering an honest prayer to help me put some things in a much-needed perspective. 

It is amazing how differently we see things when we look at things through his eyes and the filter of His Word.  

It makes me realize that an unchangeable God truly does change everything. 

For He gives meaning to the meaningless, hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, and comfort to the comfortless.  

And the whole sum of the matter? 

We serve a pretty amazing God.