All is Vanity

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in the unimportant things of life. It’s easy to spend an hour or less with God, then go through your life and forget about him. But without Christ, we’re not getting anywhere.

            “Back to the rat race,” is what I think to myself every time I wake up on Monday morning. That’s what it feels like: running around in circles and getting nowhere. That’s why Ecclesiastes 1 is one of my favorite poems; it reminds me that unless Christ is my foundation, I’m just the blowing wind.

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher

Vanity of vanities! All is vanity.

What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?

A generation goes, and a generation comes,

But the earth remains forever.

The sun rises, and the sun goes down,

And hastens to the place where it rises.

The wind blows to the south and goes around to the north;

Around and around goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns.

All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full;

To the place where the streams flow, there they flow again.

 All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it;

The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,

And there is nothing new under the sun.

Is there a thing of which it is said, "See, this is new"?

It has been already in the ages before us.

There is no remembrance of former things,

Nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to be among those who come after.