1 The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
2 Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
3 What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
4 A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever.
These are the first 4 verses of the book nobody reads because it is not inspiring. But it is true. The Hebrew word for vanity really means breath, as in emptiness. I found myself reading this on the evening of September 11, 2001 as I prayed for the victims in the towers. I thought about those lives; successful, educated, wealthy, and, in the end, empty without Jesus. How quickly it all became exposed as emptiness!
I thought of this book again as I pondered how we can reach the lost when we can’t actually reach them. Many of them have great jobs, good retirement, lots of knowledge, and it is all being destroyed by a microbe. How quickly our worldly exploits become exposed as emptiness!
True, this is not the most inspiring passage in all of Scripture. Only a pessimist would put this on a t-shirt. Remember, it is only uninspiring if we live our lives without Christ. When we follow Jesus, we learn that everything we do has meaning and everything that happens has meaning and that it is ultimately part of God’s plan to make the world right again through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. That is not vanity. It is filled with meaning and the source of joy in hardship.
God Bless,
Pastor Brad