King Solomon’s battle

I have found myself in every way in the same situation as Solomon has when he wrote the book Ecclesiastes. He has tried to determine what has meaning in life, and has gone over time and time again what has meaning in life. He came to one conclusion: everything is meaningless. What on earth is that supposed to mean, though? When he tried to embrace folly and let his heart have its desires granted, he still found himself empty. When he looked at accomplishments, he found himself empty after becoming the greatest king there could possibly be. When he looked at wisdom and folly, he found it was meaningless, and that a common destiny would overtake all men and women. He even noticed that a man and all his work will be useless as well. I mean, after all, he knew in his wisdom that nothing we do will make us worthy of Heaven other than choosing to trust God and believing in Jesus. So he was pretty sure, just as I am, that his life was worthless. Yet he observed something...he noticed that enjoying the life given to you was good when he says “ So I commend the enjoyment of life, because nothing is better for a man under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad. Then joy will accompany him in his work all the days of his life God has given him under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 8:15). Right after that he then figured out that no man can comprehend what goes on under the sun...which makes little sense in all honesty. But besides that, Solomon’s point is clear here. Our work doesn’t affect the kingdom of God, and the reason we are here on earth is because God wanted us to enjoy life and be us with all we want to see and do; God didn’t want us to fall under a snare of worry and stress over the work we do, he wanted us to enjoy it, because we are not people who are content with doing nothing all day every day. He gave us life to go enjoy things and have a joy in our hearts and be us...he knows us by name, so why would we pretend to be a better version of us in front of him or act like we enjoy different things? To sum all of this up further, what we truly want to do should be something we strive for, because God made us want to do these “useless” things since he knows we would love doing them and whatever we do could make a difference in our own eyes. That being said, we need to remember a couple things: we can’t let sin create evil desires out of them. Also, we need to remember that our accomplishments are useless, and all that has worth to us is choosing to trust in a Savior named Jesus. So all we do should be out of a trust and love for Jesus. God made us, and he wants us to be who we are WITH him in our lives, just like any father would want their children to want them. But God lets us choose whether or not we want him to be with us. You and I were born with talents, skills, struggles, enjoyments and activities we love to do in our lives and God wants to help us grow with all of that and show our love to him and each other with all of these things. That is the kind of thing to do that Solomon would agree is worth something.