April 30 – Meaningful Hope (Ecclesiastes 1:1-11)

“Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
(Ecclesiastes 1:2)

IN WORD:
Conquerors win countries, politicians win elections, competitors win championships, and corporations win takeovers. Sometimes such victories will have an effect for years, centuries, and occasionally even millennia. More often, their memory fades with the passing of a generation. Either way, they are never permanent. Like sandcastles on the beach, the works of an ingenious and ambitious race are susceptible to the incoming tide. We are created with eternal longings but have fallen into the bondage of time. Nothing we do lasts.
That was the view of an old king who had seen empires flourish and die, and who had come to know the fleeting nature of his own riches. He was right, of course — from a purely human perspective. He was facing the angst common to all who look back on their life’s work with any depth of perspective.
But that perspective is limited by the boundaries of human wisdom. It is the conclusion at which we all arrive when we depend on our own reasoning. It is wisdom without revelation — all brain and no Spirit. We who depend on God’s revelation in all its fullness know the foundation for hope: An eternal Kingdom is being built, and what we do today can bear eternal results.

IN DEED:
Statistics say one of the most common maladies of our generation is hopelessness. There is a pervasive sense among our peers that this visible life is all there is — and that’s just not enough for most people.
We have 2 necessary responses: (1) We must not let the hopelessness of our age infect us. We are to fix our hope on eternity. And, (2) we must share that hope with an anxiety-ridden generation. They are convinced that our hope is groundless. We must convince them that it isn’t. That is, we are told, one of the most meaningful, lasting things we can do.

“Other men see only a hopeless end, but the Christian rejoices in an endless hope.” -Gilbert Brenken-