3 What does a person gain for all his efforts
that he labors at under the sun?
4 A generation goes and a generation comes,
but the earth remains forever. (Ecclesiastes 1:3-4 CSB)
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.” (Mark Twain)
I love this quote from Mark Twain because it is spot on. We often live life like we are owed our current state of well being and financial security. But the world changes very quickly at times and fortunes can turn around.
I write on this topic often because I encounter many people during times of great stress. Furthermore, scripture is heavy with warnings about how hard life, but that the world goes on.
We often think that the world stops when we encounter difficulty. But it does not, it moves on, as we should. There are no guarantees in this life.
So we can get to the point, like in our scripture today, of asking “what does a person gain for all his efforts”.
Well, just because it seems that life can at times be meaningless, we must still go on and survive. Furthermore, God wants us not to just survive but to actually thrive. However, His view of us thriving may be a bit different from our own.
What we must ask ourselves is this; How does God see my efforts in the light of eternity?
If the answer to this question is that we are only working for ourselves and this lifetime we are probably falling very short of His mark.
