Daily Butter 7/25: Feeling Stuffed

My little addition to Our Daily Bread (7/25/11):

All that my eyes desired I did not refuse them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, for my heart was pleased because of all my labor and this was my reward for all my labor. Thus I considered all my activities which my hands had done and the labor which I had exerted, and behold all was vanity and striving after wind and there was no profit under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11 NASB)

Millennia have passed since the man who never had to say no to anything he wanted and was blessed with wisdom to truly understand things penned these words. Yet I still fear American culture is so far from understanding the futility of getting more stuff that many still buy into the motto from bumper stickers at the end of the twentieth century proclaiming that “He who dies with the most toys WINS.” But many are blinded or at least choosing not to recognize that there is anything more to life and existence beyond what our five senses can experience. If this is all that there is, I suppose that is the best hope they have.

Dialoging with a coworker about American heritage and political perspectives while I was thinking through this passage also fueled my thoughts tonight. Just as Joe Stowell wrote in today’s ODB that the desire for pleasure is not wrong as it is part of who we are as His creation, I have to agree with Solomon that we should receive pleasure as reward for labor. My colleague reminded me that though people are spreading this false guilt that Americans are just fat cats with entitlement issues and such, this nation built its prosperity on the back of our hard-working ancestors for generations that we should enjoy those fruits. While some may have entitlement issues from not understanding this heritage from generation upon generation building a better life for their children, the vast majority of us are still doing exactly what those forefathers did and  trying to leave our children in a better situation than we had.

Yet this, too, is vanity if we don’t understand that, as Rick Warren began his bestseller The Purpose Driven Life, “It’s not about you.” It is about Him, who we are in Him, who He is in us, and what He longs to do through us.

Andy Jentes