The Burden of Living
I’m teaching through Ecclesiastes in my 9th grade Bible class. I had the privilege of going through the book verse by verse last year during our chapel times and I’m being reminded again of how timely God’s Word can be.
As we’ve gone through chapters 1 and 2 we’ve seen that Solomon attempted to find joy, purpose, and meaning in various worldly pursuits. Knowledge, money, property, fame, sex, and entertainment were all enjoyed for a time (2:10), but in the end they failed to satisfy (2:11) Solomon’s greatest longings.
We find out in chapter 3 why this is the case.
I have seen the burden that God has laid on men. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end. -Ecclesiastes 3:10-11.
These verses explain so much about the turmoil within our lives. That God has made everything beautiful in its time simply means that everything that surrounds us in life is temporary. There is a time for the enjoyment of these things, but they will never truly satisfy our deepest longings. This is due to the fact that God has set within us the desire for that which is more than temporary.
The burden here is the desperate longing within the human heart for something that transcends the temporal and yet it is on the temporal we find “under the sun.” Our culture’s obsession with celebrity is simply connected to the desire to be known and remembered. We avoid all thought and talk of death because we have such an aversion to it as well we should.
God created us originally to live forever in perfect relationship with Him. When our sin separated us from him we began to seek meaning and purpose through the worship of things under the sun (Romans 1). Those things will never satisfy and true joy and right use of temporal things can only be experienced when we have been restored into relationship with the One who created us and all that surrounds us (2:24-25).
Jesus said that His yoke was easy and his burden light. He may not have specifically been referencing these verses, but the connection can definitely be made. Through Christ we are reconnected to God the Father and can worship Him. This allows us to enjoy the good things in life without worshiping them.
