Day 4194 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 3:20 NIV

The burden of beasts

Unfortunately it’s something we don’t think about because we only seem to think about the fact that in this life we are burdened. We think so often about all we have to do, all we’d like to get done, all we plan to have did by the time we end up dead. And yet even in this we think so little about life itself other than all our plans and the priorities that they ask us to place wherever it is that they ask we do, something that we do more often than not, doing thus and then only whatever they ask us to.

Because we think we’re more important than we are.

We’ve embraced this idea that to life there’s some unseen and yet entirely noticeable hierarchy upon which all things, all creatures especially, are to be measured and thus by which we should measure them. And it’s within this now endless measuring of everything seeking to determine, for ourselves and usually only by the same, the value, the worth, the importance of everything.

Except ourselves.

And that’s simply because the most commonly purchased lie of all those the devil sells is that one that tells how important we are. That we’re all something special. That our lives here are so vastly filled with potential, and that more often than not for only profit or power or popularity, that thus endows all of us with this ongoing personal responsibility to seek first always ourselves and their safety, their comfort, their success.

Yes, we think that we’re here to be successful in all that we do and thus too that we’re always supposed to do as much as we might with whatever might we mites might have. And this so often leads us to taking on far more than we can handle, doing things that we don’t know how to do, leaving then undone the things that we need to do and are supposed to be doing all because we think that we’re here to be building some exemplar life that’s one day left behind as a shining example for everyone who comes after us to follow after us.

But there’s the point that we all seem to still so easily miss.

There comes a day that’ll be lived after us.

One day we won’t be here anymore. One day, as we talked about yesterday, all of our plans will come to nothing because both time and truth tell us that one day one will run out as we find out the immovability of the other. Problem is that we’ve all come to live as if the one that doesn’t move is the time as we live this version of life in which we seem completely convinced that we have some endless supply of it. Indeed, we hear folks say all the time that we’ve all the time in the world, usually an adage offered suggesting that someone slow down and take their time, perhaps even take a break.

An adage we have because we’re all so stinking busy all the time that in these lives we don’t even think anymore.

Because we’ve got so many other things to get done.

Like what my friends?

What is it that we’re all so busy doing that is actually so vitally important that lives hang in the balance of it being done? What outcome in this life is so utterly reliant upon our getting everything right and doing everything possible to ensure it does turn out the way it’s supposed to? If we’re so busy that we can’t even stop and have a thought, well then how are we to really know what we are supposed to do?

How can we ever come to a realization as to who we really are?

Much less then that who we really are is really more of a what and that what we are are but beasts but sadly those who, as opposed to say donkeys or camels who have their loads placed upon them by others who intend to use them for such a specific task, we instead place all of our own burdens upon our backs. Or, anymore, we simply look for ways to not be so burdened for or by or because of anything.

The latter being far more common and seemingly becoming daily even more so.

And I think that it is in part because we are becoming increasingly lazy in life. I mean these days we don’t seem to have the willingness nor even the mere interest in doing just about anything. Indeed, if there’s somebody else who will do it for us or maybe some app or program that would probably do it better than we ever could anyway, we’re more than happy just outsourcing everything. That’s our culture’s affinity for ai. It’s this idea that allows computers to do everything from our thinking to our homework.

Kids don’t even need dogs anymore as they can just have their homework done for them by some algorithm that we’ve mostly come to completely trust simply because it takes some of our burdens off of us and thus then allows all of us to focus on all those others that we may have even come to enjoy being burdened by.

This idea hit me hard as I woke up this morning:

What’s it all for? Why am I so tired? Why am I pushing myself so hard as I am that I am, at this point, feeling always as if I’m running both behind but always too out of time to catch up? Why do I keep convincing myself that I need to do more and more, to take on more and more, to accomplish more and more while all I really seem to be accomplishing is wearing myself out, missing out on time with my family and losing the ability, the opportunity to do what are the few things that I really enjoy doing?

Things that I personally know are quite important?

If you’ve been reading along with these posts for any time at all, which, again, judging by the engagement, you haven’t, but if you had you’d have read often about my love of working out. It’s something I started going on a decade ago and it’s changed my life in ways that have given me the ability to do things now that I have no doubt I’d have never been able to do without the physical ability and the mental acuity that exercise has given me.

But anymore I’m so busy doing all these other things that I have neither the time, nor the opportunity, nor most days even the energy to do much of anything. Rather most days I’ve got so much going on that just trying to fit it within the hours of a day seems barely something I can do. And then the next day comes and it’s nothing new. Every day is just me busy.

And for the most part I still enjoy it because I do enjoy what I do. Again, you may have read that I own a lawn care business and, even though it only my second year, business is booming! I’ve already mowed more yards this year than I did all of last year. My workload has basically doubled in just a year. And I appreciate it. Like I said, still enjoy it.

But I suddenly can’t help but feel that my life has gotten all sorts of out of balance.

I just feel off, and not just the kind that I can’t even manage to sleep off because each day has to start off so early so that I’ve surely the time I need to do this thing that nobody reads.

Don’t know if I’m burning out or just simply finally finding out that maybe we’re not meant to do all the things we so often try to do. And, again considering my mental ability to convince my body to do things it doesn’t want to do within my workouts (as that’s the whole point), I don’t think it’s burnout.

I think it’s just simply that I’m worn out from trying to be and do and fix and find and feel and heal and hold and have so much as I am.

It’s the monster of meaning.

So many things have come to mean so much to us that we all do so much stuff, buy so much stuff, think so many things just trying to make our lives mean whatever it is that we think they should. And we seek this meaning in so many places and priorities and pursuits that eventually everything just sort of jumbles up and it all gets out of control. All because we all try to control everything.

All because we’ve all become these believers in this man-made ideal of our being everything to and for everyone. That we’re the ones who have do it all, know it all, have it all. That our lives are given us to fill them with purpose and meaning, passion and material. That our entire existence is supposed to be seen as nothing but the substance of all we have and all we had to do to get it.

Seriously, we’re so impressed with ourselves that the first question we always ask someone we meet for the first time is what they do for a living.

All we care about is the work, the goals, the plans and power and profit that we’ve all become convinced are things that matter most.

We are beasts burdening ourselves with all this work to do and things to win and pillars to be that we cannot anymore seem to see that underneath it all we’re still but beasts. No, all we see are the burdens, the schedules, the plans, the goals, the expectations, the reliance that we imagine others have in us and thus that we have in ourselves to be all we can be.

And yes, we should try to be all that we can as we are here to live this life the best way that we can.

But friends, again, meaning has become a monster that none of us seem at all able to get under control. Rather anymore everything is able to mean so much that eventually our lives are more packed with priorities than they are purpose. We become more worried about the paths we’re trying to pave toward all the plans we’ve made for all the prizes we want to find than we can then be about those things that just exist without needing us to do anything, to have anything, to be of the ability, the affluence or influence to even afford anything.

In fact I dare say that we’ve all forgotten that there are things in life that are free to find and actually quite easy to as well.

Because all of life has continued to swell up until this point in which we’re all just so weighted down that we barely even look up from our phones anymore as we’re terrified that we might miss out on something happening in the world around us.

Friends, why did we all stop being a part of the world around us?

Why did we all stop living life for more than we feel we need to get done within it? Why did we leave behind the simplicity of childhood in which we didn’t have smart phones and were thus able to think for ourselves and measured our memories not in comment sections or micro-pixels but rather in the moments in which we just lived life?

Why did we stop living life?

Why did we trade all of our curiosity for worry? Why did we leave behind naptime in exchange for deadlines that cause us to lose sleep at night? When did having an afternoon snack become a calculus equation focused on calories and macros? When did our work become something that means more to us than those we’re doing it for?

Why do spend so much time doing so very much trying to afford, to amass so very much that is itself nothing more than dust?

Indeed, Isaiah asks us “why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy?” Isaiah 55:2. Elsewhere in Ecclesiastes, 6:7 specifically, we read that “everyone’s toil is for their mouth, yet their appetite is never satisfied.” Even Jesus explains to the Samaritan woman in John 4:13 that “everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again.”

What water?

That taken from the well that Jacob had given them, a well that he had drank from himself, “as did also his sons and his livestock?”

That’s basically the same point as this passage in Ecclesiastes 3 is getting at.

Starting in verse 18 the writer realizes that “as for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals.” For indeed, when you really stop to think about it, yeah, “surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals.”

Verse 19 ending with that famous, “everything is meaningless.”

And yet here we sit in what are lives we’re all living all these thousands of years later and still we’re all so consumed by so many things that we think do have meaning, things that we do believe matter, things that we’re breaking ourselves apart over!

Why?

Because we just keep buying that lie that tells us that we’re important and thus that our lives need to be as important as we can at the very least make them seem as well. And it’s because of this misunderstanding that has man contending that we need to be doing all of this something that we’re doing in order to have all the something we have that has us missing out on simply living life.

It’s as Jesus points out in Matthew 6:26, “look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.” Verse 27 going on to ask “are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?”

Well, we sure seem entirely willing to try!

Indeed, how many things are we worried about today that won’t even matter by tomorrow? How many things are we wearing ourselves out to do or have or be that will one day prove to mean nothing? What of all our plans and priorities are plotting for us a path paved only to a life lived void of enjoyment or contentment or hope or happiness?

I don’t remember the last time I was happy. I know it must have not been too long ago as, again, I do enjoy much of what I do.

But there seems to come always this line we all manage to cross in life in which even that which we enjoy manages to only become such a burden that we can’t enjoy it anymore. And that’s because too much of anything is probably a bad thing. Just as too much junk food will make you fat and that causes all sorts of health issues, so too does having too many priorities or making too many plans or craving too many worldly things cause us to become weighted down by all we have to do or feel we need to get done.

All to simply have won whatever it is that we think this life is meant to be!

Friends, I think one day we’re all going to be absolutely shocked by just how simple all of this was meant to be when we’re finally forced to finally see all that we worked for and worried about is left behind as we turn ahead toward that place where there is no time and all our efforts and worries only fell inevitably short of achieving for us a welcome home.

For no matter how important we think we are nor how much we try to accomplish because of how important we think we are, there’s still no other Name under Heaven given unto man by which we must be saved.

And that pretty much from ourselves.

That’s why God’s always made such a big deal out of the Sabbath. He not only commands us to rest but demands we do. He even gets so angry that people continue to work on the Sabbath that He starts destroying them! Rest means a lot to Him!!

Why does it mean so little to us?

Why are we so willing to trade away our sleep so that we can stay up late or get to work early trying to get ahead? Ahead of what? Or why do we exchange the opportunity to exercise and in it, from it better our lives, better ourselves, better our minds for spending that time taking on an extra gig on the side so that we can afford more things that don’t make us better and can’t better our lives? Why do we continue missing out on spending time with our families as we spread ourselves thinner trying to provide for them what they don’t need?

Why are we still so confused about want and need?

Do our families, do we want things like clothes and shoes and food and vacations? Yeah. But don’t they need us to be there for them whenever they need someone to talk to or a bit of help on their homework?

Why then trade story time for overtime?

If not because we’ve all become so convinced that we live here to work.

And sure, God tells us that we are to provide for those He’s given unto our care and into our lives. But friends, if we think He’s talking about money or shelter or comfort, we’re very sadly mistaken.

My point is that such things as money and comfort and all these other “shelters” we worry about anymore, they mean nothing. Sure, they matter here in this world in which we can use them to buy things or have things or do things. But why is that which matters most to us just things? Why are things so much more important to us than memories or the making of more of them? Why are things worth more to us than such things as our personal health or even our peace is?

I often find myself marveling at the simplicity of what any given animal’s life must be. Everything from butterflies to deer to the hawks that can sit still for hours on the hay bales in the field behind our house, I just wonder what it must be like to live such a simple life.

I want a simple life.

And yet I spend my life complicating everything and taking on more and more all the time.

Burdening myself as if the beast I am is meant to be a man rather than just a dumb animal that drinks a bit of water, eats a bit of food, does a bit of work, takes a little walk, runs through a field with my friends, floats on the breeze as if I believe that there’s nothing I can do other than these that could ever matter more than they do.

What all matters to you and does it really mean as much as you think it to?

Because honestly, while we all seem to have so much and so many plans for so much more, anymore it’s the animals who seem to have it all figured out as they’re not running about heaping up worldly wealth or discounting their personal health or setting aside time spent just living life and taking care of those around them like we so often are.

Yeah, maybe there is a hierarchy to life and the understanding of the meaning and purpose thereof.

And maybe we’re on the very bottom of it.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold