peace . love . joy

The first day into my twenty-first year is a Sunday.

Today, I woke up early, about two hours before I was due in church, and turned my Bible to Ecclesiastes 1: 1-11.

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem:

Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher.
Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.

What does man gain from all his labour at which he toils under the sun?
Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains for ever.
The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.
The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

All things are wearisome, more than one can say.
The eye never has enough of seeing,
nor the ear its fill of hearing.

What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there anything of which one can say, Look! This is something new?
It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time.

There is no remembrance of men of old, and even those who are yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow.

Though the translation here of the Hebrew "הבל" (hebel) is the English "meaningless", the original intended meaning probably is closer to being vapour; breath-like; being in a constant state of transition; lacking permanence (and perhaps even, significance).

Solomon, the most likely author of this book, penned his one claim, one idea in the first lines, asking rhetoric after rhetoric that begs negative answers.

All human endeavor is futile. They all amount to nothing.

I wonder if we've ever thought of life that way.

I would say one who is close to the Lord God would be able to counter that proposition, as Solomon had in the following chapters. But I wonder still, if we have ever reached a point whereby we sit down, legs stretched out from under us, hands limp by our sides, back slumped, uttering a sad sigh and realise finally, that everything we do has no permanence?

Why do you go to school?
Why do you study phenomena?
Why do you seek answers?
Why do you work and eat and drink and breath to live to see another day?

What for?

Perhaps it takes us to be driven to such a point in life, that narrow jagged jaw of a high cliff with a narrow plank of wood that reaches from the cliff towards the horizon, above the stubborn and sharp rocks being bashed by the unrelenting angry waves, or maybe even points in life, to realise one thing:
we can either take a step backwards and turn around to return to the safe, enchanted, but meaningless life we know,
or, we can either take a deep breath and walk forwards onto the lone plank towards the horizon.

I have chosen to walk the plank above deep and dark waters. To use the lyrics of a song, I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow; a wave tossed in the ocean; a vapour in the wind. I know I am, and my deeds are impermanent. But I have chosen to let the will of God be done in me and through me. And that, my friends, serves an eternal, significant, permanent goal.

Which have you chosen?

Which will you choose?