Day 4019 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 2:23 NIV

No rest for the wanting

Which, if we were ever to again even approach being honest, is itself something of a wickedness in that to want is basically akin to saying from within that what we have is not enough. And this, when seen from God’s perspective, it really seems a clear suggestion that His provision, while appreciated, isn’t anymore quite enough to measure up to the ever more that we’ve come to want anyway and after all. Because it’s always the after as found just beyond the all that already is that finds for us the more we want still.

Meaning then that all we have isn’t all we want.

Saying then that all He’s given us isn’t enough for us.

And, well, that’s as arrogant and selfish and vain and foolish a mindset as any could ever arrive upon. Problem is that it’s one that we’ve all arrived upon. And this problem continues to prove a problem in that we continue to prove that we know nothing of contentment as we’re never seemingly satisfied with the content of our lives but rather, as we’ve been talking, always want something else. And in truth, it’s been this way throughout all of human history.

We are a people so prone to vanity, in both meanings of the word, that we do indeed spend our days trying find all we want and our every single night trying to think of more ways by which to find whatever we didn’t the day prior. All while having and retaining such a high regard of ourselves that we honestly spend time doing such worthlessness as staring into mirrors trying to make sure we look the part our desire-ridden hearts are so vastly trying to play.

Because we’re in a world that’s entirely gone in regard to such regality as reward and revenue. It’s all that matters anymore. Down here life has become all about what we have and the more we truly hope to seeing as how, again, what we do have just isn’t enough anymore thanks to something else having again come along that reminded us that there’s still more we could have if we did have the means by which to convince ourselves that it means enough to work ourselves in whatever way for however long we needed in order to obtain this newest ideal that we just don’t need.

It’s a truly interesting thing!

We spend our days working ourselves weary and ragged trying to earn passage unto the better lives we think we’d be living if only we could have all these things for which we’re working only to, by day’s end, not have them and then spend our nights lying awake trying to think of what else we could do in order to not lose one more tomorrow to our not having what we’d tried so hard to have today.

And again, it’s been this way for all our lives. And, sadly, it’ll be this way for the rest of time.

But friends, that’s kind of what Scripture, the cross particularly, is trying to remind us is in at least fairly decent need of our consideration. It’s that time itself is not on our side. Rather time is something that, like a tide, it arrives at its fullest at but one point and then ebbs away from that point onward. Indeed, when we arrive on this earth, that first breath we take outside the womb is taken with the most time we’ll ever have. Every breath we breathe from that moment on is taken with less time than ever before.

Issue is that we’ve become so used to not acknowledging this that we anymore think of time as nothing more than a tool meant to be used at our disposal upon whatever desire it may happen to be that we’ve apparently come to think is equal to the time we lose to trying to gain it.

That’s a confusion we kind of tackled yesterday.

It’s this reality that we’ve settled upon in which we measure life in what we gain, all while never really wanting to admit that all we gain is the very same as all we have to leave. The verse just prior to this, which we discussed yesterday, ponders this idea. “What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun?”

In short, what’s it all worth?

What does any of it mean? What is it that any of us really gain in all that we’re going through in order to get whatever it is that we apparently think is worth the work, worry or weariness that we’re all but promised to win along the way?

Or as put another way, “what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

For in truth, both the time and effort that we choose to give unto whatever it may be that we choose to give them to, they are measures of the soul. Or at the very least what we think them worth. Because, in truth, all for which we work and all the work we do to get there, it’s all something that we do choose to do. It’s all something that we ourselves determine is right, is worthy, is worth the worry, the wait, the work and weight of what is then a life spent assuming it’s going without.

Is it?

Are we really missing something so long as we don’t have something else?

Or are we maybe missing only more by our always thinking we need something else?

What can’t we focus on while we’re focused on what we can’t yet find or fix or afford? What won’t we worry about as our worry is worried about only whatever it is that we’ve come to want? What don’t we dream of as we lie awake every night trying to force our minds to find some way to make things work out toward our having of whatever it is that we’ve come to believe so deeply that we need so fully that our lives are forced to feel empty until we get it?

Don’t we get it?

That all we’re doing anytime that we spend our time trying to find something either in or on or elsewise of this world, that the world is then our reward? That seeking for our treasures here only keep us trying for only what’s here? That all the work and worry that we afford to anything worldly will only keep us worried and working for all that’s worldly?

And again, even should we go on to gain all the world and the more it always has to offer, what will it have profited it? How will it have improved us? How are we to be bettered by our gaining of what is a world continually embittered by all they still don’t have?

Is life to be better spent in a share of their sad or mad all because we don’t have what they too want more than the time we’re all just willfully giving away to all that eternity says can’t give it back?

For we brought nothing with us within that first breath taken with all the time we’ll ever be given.

What then makes us think that we’ll manage to take anything we’ve gaining in this place with us when our last breath here has faded, taking the last of our time with it?

And don’t get me wrong, I am by no means sat upon some high horse this still cold morn. No, I myself am in the midst of an internal battle over all that I’ve battled to bring into my life only to hang up on my wall. Because I too have long lived as if more was what I needed more than anything. Especially more, or rather specifically more than everything I already had. Indeed, I have had so many ideas for so many things that I wanted so very badly that I gave no rest to my head nor my heart until I got what both of them agreed I needed.

Only to get it, find it cool for a moment, and then watch that moment fade into my again wanting something else.

Why?

Well, again, I’m still trudging through all this myself, but I think it has something to do with the hunt. I think it’s that we all seem to feel this somewhat animalistic prowess as we’re prowling around looking for something else to desire. Issue then becomes that, yeah, that sounds pretty familiar as it’s entirely similar to the efforts and interests of he who is described in Scripture as being our adversary.

Indeed, in 1 Peter 5:8 we read that, “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” A verse that begins by asking that we be alert and of sober mind. And, well, I think sober is something that most of us have at least a fairly decent understanding of. It’s to be free from the inebriating qualities of strong drink. It’s to not be drunk and thus drown in a mind that is itself drown in the delight of what is a drink that delights to dull the senses, even of the common variety.

Yes, to be sober is to be strong enough to stand alone upon a foundation of common sense which says, among many other quite valuable truths, that seeking for more of all that we’ll only eventually leave, well, such is just stupid.

Why?

Because why spend our lives living for what only adds something to life for only a short period of time? And true, many of the things that we’ve either already come to desire or will probably learn to desire before much longer, they do in fact last a while. Like a nice house or new car. Indeed, these things can, with proper upkeep and thus respect and appreciation being given them, they can last a long time.

I’m personally trying to find myself a truck for my mowing business, and I personally find that I prefer those made prior to ’98.

So yeah, there are things that can last a really long time. They even continue to find what is widely perceived to be, and agreeably so, veritable treasure troves everywhere from the sands of Egypt to the frozen dirt of Iceland. There are still coins and crowns floating around from the time of the Romans and the Greeks and the Ancient Chinese.

This world is full of things that have mattered for centuries, and are indeed widely perceived to be far more valuable now than they even were back then.

But still, as I asked of King Tutankhamun yesterday, what does any of it matter to him now?

See, his tomb was and remains one of the most intact ever discovered. It was filled with thousands of treasures worth who knows how many millions of dollars. And indeed, he was literally buried with this stuff as the Egyptians held, perhaps still do, that there is more to life on the other side of this side of it that we’re living. There have been people literally buried with horses and boats all so that they’d have these things right there with them in the afterlife.

But friends, guess what stayed behind despite these beliefs so firm that it inspired people to do all that work digging a hole big enough to bury a boat?

The boat.

Indeed, all throughout time so many civilizations have believed so fully in the necessity of having things after we’re gone from this world that people were buried with the things they’d managed to amass in this place all so they could take it all with them wherever it is that they believed they were going.

And the only thing that ever went was the soul, the spirit, the breath and time even being left behind as, well, forever doesn’t need clocks and there’s no need for this air found here either as God has something far better to breathe, you know, without all the smog and smoke and stuff.

But you see, that’s just it! It’s that our entire outlook on life itself is one focused on the smog and smoke and stuff. We’re all so consumed with all that’s here that all that’s here is all we want to have. Some of us wanting it so very bad that even our families agree to toss it in the hole with us when from here we go. But friends, if we spend our entire lives looking only for things to fill the hole, well then how will we ever come to know anything of where we may happen to go?

And again, while there are a great many things in this place that have lasted/will last a long time, even 2,000 years is nothing compared to forever.

Because, again, what’s the point in measuring eternity? And, well, if we can’t even begin to measure eternity, then why would we ever spend so much time as all of us already have trying to measure life via such trivialities as triumphs and trophies?

Are not both to be left as but fading stories when all our life’s glories have us no longer here to regale the crowds with stories of our crowns and kingdoms?

Again, King Tut was buried with all sorts of stuff.

All the stuff now sits in a museum whilst his soul has gone on to wherever God said it could go.

Where will ours go? Even after all the work, after all the worry, after all for which we gave our lives unto being wearied and worn, where will we go? Indeed, I thought of this question yesterday just after I shared yesterday’s post:

What matters most: what we do or where we go?

For sure, they could match and there work together, but sadly so often they don't. And that’s because so much of what we do is only done only to win something else under the sun that will one day set upon what’s then a life entirely over. For that is the way of life that all of us have known to live. It’s that one in which we do so much worrying and working trying to continue finding the more that we think is worth more than whatever it is that we already have.

And thus we find that the vast majority of our work, something done often begrudgingly as we’d all clearly rather be at the beach or camping in the woods or finally taking that vacation that we’ve been trying to save for for what feels like years now, it’s all being done for things that only seem to keep us away from doing other things.

Thus our work for all that we want, it only prevents us from enjoying what we have.

And trust me, I understand that we have things that we do need and that, yeah, having jobs and making money does help us do things such as support our families and feed ourselves. I get all that. But what I’m finally, after 30 something years of seemingly seeing it differently, what I’m finally starting to see differently after all this time is that so much of what I’ve given my life to find simply wasn’t worth finding after all.

Even after I found a great deal of it!

Now it’s just stuff. It’s literally nothing more than different iterations of the very same paper and plastic dilemma we’re presented with at the grocery store.

I’ve lived my life prioritizing if not in fact idolizing what is, in reality, nothing more than the same stuff we put our trash in and wipe our rears with.

How’s that for a weird thought on a Monday morning?

But it’s true! So much of what we get from all that we do to get it, it’s just a different version of trash. Sure, it might be painted on or printed on or signed by someone we look up to and thus appreciate for whatever reason. It might be able to show us the flashing pictures we like to watch or take pictures we enjoy posting on social media. It might be stapled together to form a rare comic book or made out of wood that our great grandpa carved back in the 50’s.

But friends, so much of what we have is simply nothing we need as, well, none of it can be anywhere else other than here.

One day we’re all going to find out that the same can’t be said of our souls.

What will any of it matter then?

And again, I am not saying that nothing we have in this life means nothing at all. God has given us the ability to appreciate things, to enjoy things, to even work for things that do indeed help make our lives feel better and more comfortable and more productive and thus meaningful. But in the end, it all needs to be kept in strict perspective because I think we’re all going to look up one day and realize we’d wasted our lives trying to find that one more thing that only kept us from enjoying what we both already had and too that which we’ll then not have anymore.

Because as I’m finding on this older side of 38, less really is more as it allows us to appreciate more what we have already.

And friends, I think this is seen perfectly in regard to life itself.

We look around at a world filled with people working themselves to death trying to achieve some version of some dream that they’ve been sold is able to hold the very best meaning and purpose and worth of a life. But most of them are miserable, suffering, scared, lonely, bored, tired, angry. Why? Because they’ve come to believe that life itself is perpetually empty because all they can seem to see is what all they don’t have.

How much more could we enjoy this life if we appreciated what we already had without always feeling that we had to have something more?

I just can’t help but wonder how much harder we’re making this journey than it ever needed to be thanks to our always managing to see something else that we think we need. Because the truth is that all of us have, again, only so much time inside this life that was given us for us to figure out what matters most. And we’ve all worked so hard trying to find a way to figure that out only to have found a bunch of stuff that we thought was important that ended up being quite the opposite.

And so maybe stuff isn’t the answer we all still seem as if we really want it to be.

Maybe it’s time we look elsewhere. Maybe it’s time that we work for something else. Maybe it’s time that we start trying to find a way to understand what all He might mean by “treasures in Heaven” because the simple fact is that one day we’re all going to be stood outside those gates where we’ll wait to find out whether or not we made it in.

But friends, Heaven isn’t a retirement home given only unto those who lived a life so fancy and famous and filled with wealth and want that they had enough stuff to please or impress the One who weighs whether or not we’re welcome.

Heaven is the hope of those who here have none.

Don’t get me wrong, the road there isn’t any easier, in fact, in many ways it’s harder. But both paths through this life come with prizes and punishments. Only problem is that we’ve become convinced that it’s better seek our prizes first.

But what will that leave us to find at the end?

No, it’s far better to endure the hardship here as all that’s here will end. And by hardship I’m not talking about overtime spent at work trying to earn a little bit more to buy a little bit more. I’m talking about learning to let it all go before it’s all taken away.

Because one day it will be. Please don’t live your life working so hard for what you can’t take with you. Because that kind of misery isn’t worth anything. Rather seek for the suffering that does accomplish something that will last forever.

For this is what He means by Heavenly treasure. In fact, His promise is literally the one thing we can’t work for nor earn. But it’s also one thing we can’t even pretend we care about so long as we care so much about working so hard and enduring so much for only all that both stays here and keeps us then from focusing on there.

Don’t risk that.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold