What a Waste of Time
Ecclesiastes 4:7-8 Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. “For whom am I toiling,” they ask, “and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business.
Have you ever found yourself working so hard that one day, you wake up to discover that you’re all alone? At least that’s how it feels. You’ve been pedalling so hard at work or at bringing up the children or at whatever it is that you’ve been throwing yourself into, that all of a sudden, the relationships that matter most to you are in rack and ruin. Or worse still, they’re just not there anymore.
It’s a temptation for all of us, to be so focussed on this or that, slogging away just to make ends meet or working hard to give our children more opportunities … whatever it is … and then you get to asking yourself:
Why? Why am I doing this? I’m not getting any younger. The more I work hard at things, the lonelier I feel.
Now please, don’t get me wrong. I believe in hard work. I always have and I suspect I always will. But we need some balance. We need to have friendships and relationships and deep connections as well – because that’s how God made us. Without them, all that other stuff is pretty empty, pretty meaningless. And those relationships take an investment of time and emotions.
One of the wisest men on earth, King Solomon, came to this very conclusion as he looked at these lonely individuals toiling away, never satisfied with their riches:
Again, I saw vanity under the sun: the case of solitary individuals, without sons or brothers; yet there is no end to all their toil, and their eyes are never satisfied with riches. “For whom am I toiling,” they ask, “and depriving myself of pleasure?” This also is vanity and an unhappy business. (Ecclesiastes 4:7-8)
This word vanity that Solomon uses over and over again in the book of Ecclesiastes, is an interesting one. It carries with it this sense of being like a mist, a vapour, a breath that lasts for a short time, but then it disappears. It’s temporary, here now, but gone in an instant.
So what he’s saying is that all this hard work, this solitary toil in order to gain riches is so silly. The rewards are like a mist. They’ll be gone soon and then we ask ourselves, “For whom am I toiling and depriving myself of pleasure?” Good question!
Living our lives like that, is a vanity and an unhappy business. So, have you been trading diamonds for stones? Have you been losing your most important relationships through solitary toil? They’re hard questions, but they’re the sorts of questions we need to be asking ourselves.
Hard work? That’s great.
But friends, family … they’re what make our lives rich, don’t you think? And forsaking them, losing them, for the sake of riches, is just downright crazy.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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