I just got back from south Florida. I went there to break a mindset. Washington DC has a way of pressing itself into you if you live there long enough. Everyone is chasing something. A title. A position. A cause. A reputation. Money. The pace never stops, and after a while you stop noticing that it hasn’t stopped.

South Florida gave me distance. And distance gave me eyes to see something I already knew but needed to see again. People everywhere are pursuing activity in an attempt to fill their lives with meaning. Golf. Boats. Building a business. Building a body. Building a name. None of it is wrong in itself. But watch long enough and you will see the same restlessness in south Florida that you see on Capitol Hill. Different scenery. Same emptiness underneath.

That restlessness is not new. A king in Jerusalem named it three thousand years ago.

Vanity of Vanities

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes had more resources than anyone reading this blog will ever have. Wealth. Wisdom. Power. Pleasure without limit. He built houses, planted vineyards, gathered silver and gold, denied himself nothing his eyes desired. Then he turned and looked at all of it.

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”  Ecclesiastes 1:2, NKJV

The word translated vanity means vapor. Breath. Something you can see for a moment and then it is gone. That is his verdict on a life of pursuit without God at the center. Not that pleasure, work, and wisdom are evil. His verdict is that none of them can bear the weight we place on them. We ask activity to give us meaning, and activity was never built to hold that weight.

I Tested His Words Myself

I first met these words as a teenager. I was not old enough to know if they were true. I only knew they claimed something enormous, and I remember wondering whether a man that wise could really be right about all of it being vapor. I had not lived enough life yet to test the claim. So I meditated on it, and I waited to find out.

By the time my teenage years were almost over, I had my answer … at least partially. The Preacher was right. There was no fulfillment in life under the sun. And still I went out and pursued a great deal anyway, the way most of us do even after we suspect the truth. I have traveled the world. I have obtained a lot of education. I have written books. I have been poor, and I have been wealthy. I chased down interest after interest that my heart desired. Every one of them, once I actually reached it and lived inside it for a while, turned out to be exactly what Solomon said it would be. Vapor. Under the sun.

Two Categories, No Third Option

Here is what (reaffirmed) conclusion struck me on that trip. Everything I watched people pursuing, and everything I have pursued myself, sorts into one of two categories. There is no third bucket. Either a person orders life around the reality of a holy God, or a person orders life around the absence of Him. Every activity, every ambition, every relationship gets filed under one heading or the other, whether the person filing it has ever thought about it that way or not.

Some people meditate deeply on this. They wrestle with it in the quiet, they lose sleep over it, they read and pray and search. Some people have thought about it once or twice and decided not to think about it again, because the question is inconvenient. And some people, if we are honest, have never once stopped long enough to ask what any of their pursuing is actually for. Ecclesiastes was written for all three.

A Life Under the Sun Cannot Satisfy

Solomon’s phrase for life lived without reference to God is “under the sun.” He uses it nearly thirty times. It describes a horizontal existence, everything measured against everything else on the same flat plane, with nothing above it to give it weight or direction. Under the sun, wisdom dies with the fool. Under the sun, labor is inherited by someone who did not earn it. Under the sun, the same events happen to the righteous and the wicked, and a man can gain the whole world and still be answered by his own grave.

“What profit has a man from all his labor in which he toils under the sun?”  Ecclesiastes 1:3, NKJV

That is the honest question behind every boat purchased, every campaign run, every empire built in south Florida or on the Potomac. What profit. Solomon asked it as a man who had already acquired everything the question could test. His answer still stands. Under the sun, nothing satisfies, because nothing under the sun was built to satisfy the part of us that was made for eternity.

“He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.”  Ecclesiastes 3:11, NKJV

That verse explains the restlessness. God placed eternity inside every human heart, and every pursuit that stops short of Him will eventually feel that ache. That is why the activity never quite fills the space. It was never sized for the job.

Fear God, and Enjoy What He Gives

Ecclesiastes does not end in despair. It ends in a conclusion, and the conclusion is the whole point of the book. The meaning of life:

“Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all.”  Ecclesiastes 12:13, NKJV

That is category one. A life ordered around the reality of a holy God. Not a life without labor, without pleasure, without ambition. Solomon does not tell us to stop working or stop enjoying what God gives.

“Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor.”  Ecclesiastes 2:24, NKJV

The difference is not the activity. The difference is the center. Food, labor, and the years God gives are called good gifts to be received from His hand, not idols to be worshiped for the meaning we hope they will produce. Category one receives life as a gift under God. Category two demands that life produce meaning on its own, under the sun, with nothing above it.

I did not find that out in theory. I found it out when I purposed in my heart to give Him the first fruits of my labor and to pour tireless energy into seeking Him… not out of obligation, but out of curiosity for Who He is.  That is when fulfillment came, and it was a fulfillment many people will never understand, because they have never tested it the way I finally did. My books and this ministry were not a plan I engineered. They happened naturally, the byproduct of being drawn deeper and deeper into God’s presence. The closer I have gotten to Him, and the more I have stayed there, the more fulfilled (and peaceful) I have become. And the more I see people chasing endless activities under the sun, the more sorrowful I have become for them. That is not a formula. It is simply what happened.

Two Kinds of Knowledge

I desperately want the world to see what I have read and what I have experienced, and both matter. There are two types of knowledge behind everything I write. There is the knowledge that comes from the Word of God, and there is a second knowledge I cannot hand you in a book. It only comes from walking with God and experiencing trials.

It is the knowledge of agonizing over a life changing prayer, sometimes for years, and then watching the answer arrive in a way that leaves no room to doubt God is real. It is meditating on the same verses for days, then weeks, then months, then years, until they stop being words on a page. It is living long enough to recognize that what a character in Scripture went through, you are now going through too, and realizing you are not the first person to walk that road.

That second knowledge is why I keep looking for people in this world who have experienced God the way I have. Not to compare notes for the sake of comparing, but because there is a particular joy in finding someone else who enjoys Him the way you do. And it is why I long for everyone I come in contact with to experience the fulfillment in their soul that only God can provide. Not activity dressed up as fulfillment. The real thing.

What I Brought Back From South Florida

I did not go south to escape Washington. I went to see it clearly. And what I saw is not unique to any city. It is the human condition, dressed differently depending on the zip code. People meditating, avoiding, or never even considering the one question underneath every other question. What is my life actually for.

Ecclesiastes will not let you avoid it forever. Sooner or later the vapor shows itself for what it is. The invitation of this book, and the invitation of this blog, is to stop asking activity to do what only God can do. Fear Him. Keep His commandments. Receive your labor and your days as gifts from His hand rather than substitutes for His presence. That is man’s all. Not because it limits you, but because it is the only foundation that was ever built to hold the weight of a life.

Purpose in your heart to test the wisdom of God I am sharing from Ecclesiastes. Do not take my word for it. Test it the way I tested it.

Focus on God. Put more effort into seeking Him than you put into anything else in your life. Give Him relentless pursuit, and you will start to realize that the activities under the sun do not matter next to diligently seeking God. That is the only true meaning any man will ever find in life.

Earnestly Pursuing God Ministries