So I decided to compare wisdom with foolishness and madness (for who can do this better than I, the king? ). I thought, “Wisdom is better than foolishness, just as light is better than darkness. For the wise can see where they are going, but fools walk in the dark.” Yet I saw that the wise and the foolish share the same fate. Both will die. So I said to myself, “Since I will end up the same as the fool, what’s the value of all my wisdom? This is all so meaningless!” For the wise and the foolish both die. The wise will not be remembered any longer than the fool. In the days to come, both will be forgotten. So I came to hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless—like chasing the wind. – Ecclesiastes 2:12-17 NLT
As the critic examines this life from a purely humanistic point of reference, can’t we are how hopeless a life without meaning past ourselves proves to be? If there is nothing more than self, if I have made myself more important than all, if I have set myself upon the throne of my own life, where will my vanity end but in my own death? And what will even my own death accomplish?
Yes, there is more to this life, this c wield, this existence than what can be seen, touch, tasted, measured and contemplated. There are thoughts and concepts and forces at work that are beyond the neat little box I would like to fit everything into.
I look upon the undeniable hand of Good in all this and I am humbled and see myself foolish in whatever wisdom I think that I have gathered into my shopping cart to buy with my time and effort when He offers it freely to those who will listen and receive, to those who have ears to hear. Tune your ears to His guidance, to His leading, to the touch of His Good News as He reveals Himself to you, friend. For in Him and in Him alone will you find Truth, will you find the way, and will you live the life set before you.
This is godly wisdom. Follow Christ who is trustworthy, instead of chasing the wind which is meaningless.
Harold J. Ballinger 