The opening chapters of Ecclesiastes can be very perplexing. What is Solomon’s point? Why all the ranting and raving? He seems to go to great lengths to prove his point that all is vanity! Wisdom, pleasures, toil, possessions, and wise living, everything! “Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2).
Now it doesn’t take the wisest man who ever lived to figure this out! While many are deceived into thinking that life is found in these things, there are many who realize that the comforts of this world and life both pass away and never fulfill. For Solomon though, the seeming meaninglessness of this life was eating him alive! Why work hard if when you are gone, the ground will feaster again with weeds, your storehouse will be plundered, and you will be forgotten? What is life anyway? We live a few short years and then return to dust just like an animal? He cries, “So I hated life, because what is done under the sun is grievous to me, for all is vanity and a striving after wind” (2:17). It all just seems like a huge production with no point!
However, the seeming “no point” IS the point!
In other words, there must be more! There must be something more than this temporary life. There must be something more than the fleeting pleasures, temporary rewards for virtues, and the short-lived satisfaction of accomplishment. There MUST be something, or Someone, more!
Indeed, there is! There is the Almighty God of heaven and earth! It is in His eternal, redemptive plan to magnify His name without end that makes this seemingly vain existence worth an eternity of glorifying Him!
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