I dream of living an incredible life of adventure. I aspire to embrace life and all that it has to offer, yet often I find myself feeling unfulfilled. This idea has caused me to reflect on Ecclesiastes 2. Over seven times the writer claims that the approach to life he has tried is meaningless. He pursues pleasures, seeks wisdom, works the earth, and gains wealth, yet finds that all of this is meaningless in the fulfillment of the heart. But if all is meaningless, how do I find meaning? At the end of the chapter, beginning in verse 24, he says, “A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment? To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God.” All things in life are meaningless when pursued without first discovering fulfillment in Christ. Wishing to be successful and wanting to be prosperous are in themselves not bad things. The idea of the “American Dream” on its own is not harmful. It is when these things dominate life and and diminish God’s sovereignty that they are dangerous. In John 5:39-40 (MSG) Jesus says: “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from me the life you say you want.” Sometimes it’s as if the very thing I’m looking for is the thing I believe is obstructing my view. The life I say I want is right in front of me, in the things I’m trying to push out of the way to make room for my own plans. I need to learn to remind myself daily that what I do, where I am, and what I have is not as important as who I am. My pursuit of happiness, adventure, and fulfillment will never be successful unless it is rooted in the life God has destined for me.
