Day 4199 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Ecclesiastes 1:16 NIV

The emptiness of everything

This world manages to offer each of us so very much that the sum of it all seems daily overwhelming. For we start this journey as but children who’ve still their ability to believe in those things which exist outside of what age tells us are possible. And as we grow in a world filled with so much to know, so much to see, so much have and hold and hope to be we don’t feel that ability to believe in more slip away. Why? Because it’s replaced by a way of life in which we don’t need it as, again, there’s here so much around us that doesn’t ask that we believe in it.

It’s all just there.

We can see it. We can feel it. We can hear it and hold it and hopefully even come to have it. And this idea that we can have rather than continuing having to hope becomes to us as we get old the wiser pursuit. After all, why endure the wonder and worry of what is every belief when you can settle far easier for all that you can see? (Wonder because all belief is unbridled and yet the worry because you start to feel time’s hurry as we run out of it and you begin then to feel said wonder shift into a doubt found in whether or not you can ever have all you’ve here hoped to hold).

Sadly then believing slowly becomes a child’s game as it’s replaced by a mind that’s unfortunately lived long enough to have learned that lie that is enough. Yes, as adults we grapple by the hour with this concept of enough. Are we doing enough or have we already done enough? Do we have enough or might we need more to get there? Have we seen enough to know the true lay of life? Have we heard enough to determine what’s the truth and what’s the lie?

Have we lived enough to know enough to know yet that there is here no such thing as enough of living, enough of wisdom, enough of humility or hope or peace or purpose or the promise that is life eternal?

For indeed, this is a lesson very few ever learn as, again, down here we’re surrounded by so much that we could all spend a dozen lifetimes on this spinning ball of dirt and still never see it all or hear it all or taste, touch, try it all. There’s simply too much. There are too many places to go, entirely more things to see and an impressive number of people to meet. Truly, there are still corners of this globe that have never been touched by a human’s hands or seen by human eyes.

There is ground here that nobody has ever walked on despite our kind having been here since the dawn of life itself!

And yet we all somehow grow to agree to this idea of our being able to see enough, to hear enough, to know enough and feel enough and fail enough to eventually find the outermost boundaries of such things as wisdom and knowledge and purpose and reason and all of them tied together into this one gift we’ve all been given to be human beings being only whatever it is that we so often alone and there by ourselves think is right or true or reasonable?

How dare we so agree to so confine the concept of all which exists into these minds and hearts that we’ve learned to fit within a world in which we’re leaving?

No, rather, to me, even the process of learning has started to become grieving. And this is truly a very strange feeling as I’ve always loved learning, still do in fact. But I find that to everything there is a limit in either existence or purpose or usefulness. And I’m starting to wonder if the purpose of this life that we’ve been given is but for our to find those limits. To seek for the fringes of what is whatever it is that we determine to seek out or understand. To give ourselves to the journey to know ourselves and where they are and why they do whatever they do as opposed to all they don’t.

Basically I’ve found that I’m beginning to believe that despite our all agreeing that this world has everything we could ever need or ever want, there’s this certain emptiness to everything that can neither be ignored nor escaped.

Rather I perceive that we are all bound to be lost here perpetually in this search for everything only to reach the end of these lives only to there and then find that no matter what we found, what we did, what all we had and what more we wanted, it shall all be but eternally tainted so long as it retains any importance based on me.

Indeed, I believe that of all our failures and folly and the foolishness which inspires us to all continue running blindly to heap up more of everything that’s here, perhaps the worst of them all is all of our interest and excitement and reliance in and on and of ourselves.

And that’s because no matter what we do or where we go, no matter what all we have nor what more we don’t, no matter what we can see and whether or not in more we’re willing, able then to believe, so long as we give this life to measuring anything by ourselves and on our own, nothing can then mean anything.

And that’s because we’re not meant to be the ones who know the limits.

We’re not the ones given the ability to actually find the fullness of anything. Rather to us everything is meant to exist in this perpetual fog of curiosity and uncertainty. There needs to be some degree of unknown left to everything in life, of life so that we can spend our lives trying endlessly to find further the reason we have them. Indeed, I believe that these lives are ours to give away and, well, considering the cross, that’s just something that all of us can always learn and thus know more about.

And yet we spend these years we call a life fleeing from this fear of our not knowing so many other things. We give so much effort and intention to our seeing, hearing, touching and tasting as many of this world’s ways and wares as we can learn to want or wonder about. And it’s within this pursuit of things measured in worldly ways and woes that causes all of us to know what is that life in which we find that insatiable desire to have more and more of everything here.

Never once seeming to realize that our indeed coming to increase in regard to all that this world knows or believes or clearly has to offer has never, for anyone, managed to bring about true peace or purpose.

Rather every human who has ever walked this earth has left here with what felt unfinished business.

Odds are that business was/is want. And that’s because to want is to live as far as we can tell. Granted, we may not tell it that way were we to be asked, which one day we will be. Rather chances are that we’d put it differently as if we were doing it due diligence in all of this sampling and trying and seeking and finding of what we ourselves always agreed to always believe was what and where and who we should be and try and do.

But there it is again!

It’s all become all about what all we believe. Life here has devolved into our being the line by which limits are measured and mined. All of us have given so very much time to letting it be us who determine everything around us and everything about us. We’re the ones we look to whenever we’re in need of a goal, a plan, a pursuit. And as the ones we lean on to lead the way, we’re so too the ones who will unknowingly limit what all we can see and do because we’ll always opt for the safety of staying within our abilities and understandings.

And thus even something such as wisdom or truth have become these pursuits only taken inward toward those parts and places that our pride and arrogance will always believe to forever be all we need.

Yes, we believe that we alone can somehow be the ones to find all the answers.

And that without even asking all the questions.

All because we all think it wise to exist within whatever it is that we alone think wisdom is.

Yet here in this passage we read through the thoughts of the man who was and remains considered to be the wisest who has ever lived. And Solomon is considered this because, when asked by God that for which he wished, he asked not for money or power or other such worldly importance but rather requested wisdom and understanding so as to lead God’s people well.

Solomon humbled himself to seeking first the honor of God and that by second upholding the position He’d given him.

And God granted his request, so much so that people came from all over the map to come and hear him talk as from his mouth poured this instinct and knowhow that everyone knew somehow must have come from somewhere else.

Because wisdom should be strange.

It should sound different, feel different. It should cause us to feel different about where we are and what we’re doing while we’re here as both are both experienced but at times also endured while we’re here in what wisdom says is for a time but not a life.

And why would wisdom consider what we’re living not a life?

Because life doesn’t die. Because to die is the opposite of life. And yet, here we die!

And yet so too here we live. Here we look. Here we learn. Here we love. Here we lose. Here we leave.

So what then does anything here really mean?

How can we imagine or expect such things as wisdom or truth to be but these common pursuits that we all barely agree to take toward them? I mean we’ve ourselves placed a limit on so many things that even learning is considered something of which we’ve done enough by the time we turn 18. After that we’re deemed ready to venture out into the world and able once there to make a meaningful mark upon this madness that is mankind.

For we measure life in time. We measure truth in what sounds right. We measure purpose in pleasure and pain. We measure meaning in money and memories. We measure reason in seasons as our opinions of that which is reasonable changes like they do, even more often than they do.

And yet we do all of this as if it all makes sense to.

How could it?

Truly, how can we be the ones that we expect to at some point have it all figured out? Have we forgotten our own limitations? Have we misplaced our awareness of our many misunderstandings? Have we misunderstood where we’re standing and what all still waits up ahead?

One day we’re all going to end up dead. Does this mean that such things as truth and wisdom die with us? Because we often sure live as if they will. And that because we spend our entire lives here looking for only those versions of them that seem to fit in or agree with our lives and how we determine to live them. Wisdom is something that somehow means something different to everyone. Truth anymore the same. Indeed, in this world we’re all told to go and live your truth.

I don’t have a truth. I’ve a thousand heaps of what I thought was true now smoldering behind me in what’s been a past in which I’ve been mistaken far more often than I was right. Indeed, I’ve made so many mistakes that I’ve even started forgetting some. And there are even some that I cannot forgive myself for having been so dumb as to have done.

And yet I’m supposed to still be the one who defines whatever wisdom might be and too wherever it will be that I’m determined to find it?

No, that just doesn’t make any sense. For again, I don’t have a truth of my own. I don’t have a blueprint for understanding. I haven’t within my heart the floorplan of Heaven nor the layout of the wisdom which both awaits us there nor walks with us along the way. Rather all I have are inabilities, limitations, struggles, failures, worries, wonders.

I’m a walking, talking confusion with a heart and head both so filled with doubt and delusion that it’s damnable to imagine that I can even consider that I know anything of wisdom or truth or meaning or reason!

I’m a heathen! A heartless wretch! I’m the one who’s lived this life to death!!

I made all the mistakes I’ve made. I messed up all the times and things that I did. I’ve forgotten and thus forsaken what it was to believe. I sat aside what hope should be. I gave away so many chances to have become everything I never was!

I don’t know what wisdom is. I don’t know where understanding lives.

But I know they’re not here and thus not in me. Because, if they were, then they’d be limited like I am. And I, my friends, I can’t imagine that being the case. I can’t agree to something such as truth being limited in point or pursuit. I can’t fathom reason being able to revolve around my irrationalities. I can’t comprehend how wisdom is supposed to be something that I can find only to lose and leave behind.

And yet that’s how we live this life!

We all spend years, decades, our entire existences perhaps upon this pursuit of whatever it is that we think we’re supposed to. And yet the issue is that we’re prideful to a fault! We refuse to pursue anything we can’t find or figure out. And so this causes us to eventually ask such ideals as wisdom and reason and our very purpose for being to become something that exists within our abilities to find it or have it or prove it. Yes, we try to prove ourselves wise though such folly as human language or social success.

We’ve made an utter mess of what was meant to be an endless journey.

Why?

Because our pride needs there to be finish lines. We need to be able to finish things. We have to be able to find the limits and check the boxes so that we can feel as if we’re accomplished. Yes, we’re all down here trying so hard to accomplish life and to accomplish wisdom and to accomplish truth.

And yet all we’ve determined to do is to opt for seeking our own versions of all the above!

Friends, again, we don’t have versions of them as they don’t any of them exist in any way other than that in which God ordained and established them. Wisdom is His. Truth is His.

We are His!

But the problem is that we live as if we’re our own. As if truth is something we can own. As if wisdom is something we can know.

IT ISN’T!!

Wisdom is rather something we can only find. Truth is something we can only walk with or fight against. Understanding is something we can only grow in through failure and fragility. Reason is what we’re here to keep looking for as our reason for being here has already come here and left to go and make ready our place in that place that the vast majority here don’t believe in anymore.

All because we’ve all traded our ability to believe for our desire to know.

We want to know wisdom. We want to define truth. We want to be the only ones who decide for ourselves why we’re here so that we can ensure that we’ll eventually feel as if we managed to live up to our being here only by doing whatever we determined to while we were.

We want to accomplish things so that we can feel as if we’ve accomplished something.

But friends, so long as we remain involved in determining what something is or where it might be found or however much we alone think we need, all we’re then doing is limiting everything to fit within us.

And that’s simply not why we’re here.

We’re not here to complete wisdom. We’re not here to map out understanding. The purpose of our lives is not for us to ever assume that within them we’ll find the fullness of anything. And that’s because should something like truth or reason have a fill that we could find, then what could they be worth? If humans could achieve wisdom, what more then would there be left for us to do? If we could know everything, have everything, see everything, gain then everything, what more could we gain afterward?

This is why God asks what it would profit a man to gain all the world at the forfeit of his soul.

Because this world is ending whereas the soul is destined to keep on going wherever it is that it’s to be deemed worthy of going.

And there are only two options to that outcome.

One will be found by those who live their lives convinced they’ll find only the other as given them as a reward for their having achieved, accomplished, completed the purpose for which they themselves thought they were here. The other will be found by only those few who live here inside that belief that we can neither find the goal nor ever accomplish or amass or amaze enough to be welcomed once we stumble upon it.

In other words, Heaven is the hope of the humble whereas hell is the home of those who thought wisdom and truth and realty and reason all something they could control.

Friends, my point is that we’re not here to finish anything. We’re just here to find out that we can’t. For the point of this life was always meant to be the pursuit toward life. Trying to finish things along the way is only our letting ourselves and their ego get in the way of where all of this is going.

Make no mistake, here we can endeavor to be wise, and indeed we all should. But here we cannot complete wisdom.

Here we can only either grow in it or drift from it.

And He’s given us each but a uniquely certain number of years within which to determine which.

May we all choose wisely.

For no matter what we may manage to have here and no matter how much of it we may think we have, what we cannot have is any idea as to just how empty everything here really is.

At least not yet.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold