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“What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). Life seems to be a breeze for many of us. Most of what we desire is available at the swipe of a card or the flick of a switch. But it was not achieved without some hard sacrifices. Many of us can remember the long gruelling hours spent in school followed by the stressful environment at work. A recent survey showed that the stress level for the overall population has gone up over the years. We usually end up asking the same questions – “Is it worth it? Is there meaning to this struggle? Is this all to life?”
Economically, we may have done very well but based on some measures of happiness, we fared far below a nation like Bhutan, a developing country. Based on emotional benchmarks, we are a long way off. Our search for peace and meaning in life from a worldly viewpoint has been an endless clamouring for perfection in everything we do without much success. In King Solomon’s words in Ecclesiastes: “Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless”. Ecclesiastes 1:3 asks “What do people gain from all their labours at which they toil under the sun?” The ancient sage also provided some thought provoking wisdom to make his point. Many people tried to change the world but in the end, the world still remained more or less the same. The cycles of nature simply follow the rules that God imposed from the beginning. The sun rises and sets in the same place repeatedly. The winds blow back and forth while the waters flow back into the sea (Ecclesiastes 1.5-7). In the words of Harry Chapin (1960s): “All my life’s a circle; sunrise and sundown; the moon rolls thru the nighttime; till the daybreak comes around”. The unchanging cycles expressed the monotony and meaninglessness of life.
Most people have a genuine desire to achieve something worthwhile during their lives. Even if we manage to do something good, by our own efforts, wealth and initiative we cannot, on our own, find the meaning and peace that we seek. Romans 7:18 says, “For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out”. We have to turn to God our Creator to achieve meaning, peace and fulfilment in life.
