In Search of a Meaningful Life

Monumental Moments

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

April 6, 2025

In Search of a Meaningful Life

Let’s turn in our Bibles to Ecclesiastes chapter one. Ecclesiastes is right between Proverbs and the Song of Solomon. We’ll have the passage on the screen as well. This will be the last in our series Monumental Moments. Ecclesiastes is a heavy book but I think that it has something to say to us that is appropriate especially as many of us are grieving the loss of a friend and as we approach the Passion season.

When I was a kid I would watch a show called In Search Of, hosted by Leonard Nimoy (Spock in the Star Trek series). One that I enjoyed was about Bigfoot or Sasquatch. The Bigfoot legend began in the ‘50’s and 75 years later people are still looking for proof that Bigfoot exists.

In the book of Ecclesiastes Solomon goes in search of the meaning of life. It opens with his lamenting the meaninglessness of life:

The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:² “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” Ecclesiastes 1:1-2 (NIV) (Pray)

Right off we’re wondering what’s going on because this gloom and doom runs contrary to the rest of the Bible. Also we know that Solomon has deep roots in the promises of God. He himself had received a promise from God in a dream. He knew the promises and mighty acts of God on behalf of his people Israel. He knew how the Lord’s hand had been on his father David. It was Solomon who wrote "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom".

So what do we do with this opening note of despair? I suspect that Solomon’s personality type tended towards melancholy and introspection as deeper people sometimes do. He was powerful and rich and had everything he could want and I think Solomon found that with all of this wealth and power he felt empty. He couldn’t find the meaning of life.

So he decides to go in search of the meaning of life. But first we need to understand what he means when he says everything is meaningless.

The Hebrew word translated meaningless is the word heber. It means a mist or vapor. Life is a vapor, a cloud, a puff of smoke, here one minute, gone the next. You can never quite get a grip on it. Solomon isn’t saying life is empty of meaning so much as that the meaning of life is elusive and mysterious.

What do people gain from all their laborsat which they toil under the sun?⁴ Generations come and generations go,but the earth remains forever.⁵ The sun rises and the sun sets,and hurries back to where it rises.⁶ The wind blows to the south and turns to the north;round and round it goes,ever returning on its course.⁷ All streams flow into the sea,yet the sea is never full.To the place the streams come from, there they return again.

⁸ All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing

nor the ear its fill of hearing. ⁹ What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. Ecclesiastes 1:3-9

The phrase in verse 3 and repeated in verse 9: under the sun is repeated 29 times in this book but isn’t found anywhere else in the Bible. Solomon is going to examine this vapor, this puff of smoke called life, and explore every possible way that people can try to find meaning and purpose for their life. But this is key: he's looking at it purely from an earth-bound perspective. He's going to take a hard look at life totally with "under the sun" glasses. He’s in search of meaning under the sun. Is there a path, a pursuit, a set of goals, achievements, accomplishments or attitudes that give us a meaningful life? Like big foot, does it exist and just hasn’t been found or is it something we can never find because it doesn’t exist?

Solomon is going to be our host taking us on a search for meaning.

The meaningless, wearisome, cyclical nature of life

The first thing he observes is the endless, wearisome cycle of life. The sun rises and sets then does it again. The winds blows, the streams flow, day goes into day. It’s like we’re on an endless loop, same stuff, different day. And there’s a weariness that creeps in from this cycle.

The opening scene in the TV version of Charles Dicken’s Bleakhouse (well worth watching) captures this weariness. Lady Dedlock looks out the window of her mansion on a gloomy, rainy day. Her husband, Sir Leicester Dedlock asks, is it still raining my love?

She answers wearily, yes, my love. Then under her breath: And I am bored to death with it. Bored to death with this place, bored to death with my life, bored to death with myself.

What was that my love? He asks. Nothing…of consequence.

How many people like Lady Dedlock are weary and bored of their life? We do the same things every day, day in day out and it can become wearisome. Some try to break this wearisome cycle with the pursuit of new. New hairdo, new clothes, new car, new home, new job, new marriage, new lifestyle…new, new, new!

But before long the new becomes old. I’m old enough to remember when flip phones were new. Or AOL with that voice, “you’ve got mail!” So new and exciting! These days the new gets old so fast it’s impossible to keep up. There is nothing new under the sun.

In Search of Meaning Path #1: Pleasure

So Solomon searches for meaning in pleasure. Can a meaningful life be built on pleasure? Hedonism. Can life be filled with so much pleasure that we find the elusive meaning we’re all looking for?

Weekend trips to the Cayman Islands, eating at 5 star restaurants, a different sports car for each day of the week, a 100” Smart TV with surround sound. Drinking the finest wine. Solomon had the resources to get whatever pleasure he wanted and he denied himself nothing but in the end it was just smoke.

Often it’s the people who have the biggest and most pleasure who are the most bored with life. Paul writes that the person who lives for pleasure is dead even while they live. Pleasure isn’t bad in itself but living for pleasure is a dead end.

In Search of Meaning Path #2: Hard Work and Accomplishing Great Projects

Several years ago at a family reunion some of us started watching a show where Bigfoot hunters felt they found a place with credible bigfoot sightings so they were excited that finally they were going to encounter Bigfoot. Ful of hope and anticipation they went out at night with headlamps and they would hit a tree with a stick and then someone or something would hit a distant tree in the same pattern. Iremember one of them excitedly telling the camera, “more than likely that is a Bigfoot communicating with us.” Finally they were about to encounter the elusive bigfoot and we happened to turn it on in time to see it. But in spite of it being a place where credible sightings had been reported, the show ended with no Bigfoot sighting.

Hard work and great accomplishments seems like a credible place to find a sighting of deep and lasting meaning to life. It has a little deeper credibility and functionality than pleasure. Work and its rewards seems an attractive place to derive meaning. That’s why so many people work long hours hoping to get that title, that promotion, that raise, that corner office. It’s what these things promise to give them – an accomplished career, an impressive resume, a high salary, seems a credible place to find meaning. How many people sacrifice their family on the altar of their jobs in search of meaning?

Don’t get me wrong – hard work and accomplishments aren’t bad things. They’re good, God-given things. But can they alone impart the meaning we long for? Solomon says no. It wasn’t there.

In Search of Meaning Path #3 – Wisdom and other things

Solomon tried living wisely and although he does find that wisdom is better than foolishness in the day to day living but in the end the wise and the fool die the same way.

Solomon searches for meaning in advancement. We talk about “getting ahead in life” – what does that even mean? Are we in a race? How do you know if you’re getting ahead or falling behind?

He searches for meaning in riches. The one who dies with the most toys wins. Really? From another perspective the one who dies with the most toys leaves the most behind him or her. He searches for meaning in youthful strength and finds it to be meaningless.

Exhausted Solomon says he hated life because it was all smoke and striving after wind. (Eccl. 2:17)

In Search of Meaning Path #5 – Remember God

Solomon concludes that ultimate meaning can’t be found in anything under the sun. It’s found in Someone who isn’t under the sun, He’s above the sun. The book ends urging us to remember our Creator in our youth.

Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind. ¹⁴ For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil. Eccles. 12:13-14

Meaning in life isn’t something we determine – God does on that final day of judgment. On that day He will say to billionaires “you were poor toward God” and to poor widows, “you were rich toward God.”

Jesus came to give us his righteousness so we will be able to stand on the day of judgment. Jesus came to bring us meaning that doesn’t originate under the sun, it comes from heaven. It’s a meaning that doesn’t rust, or rot, or can be stolen. And it’s a meaning that reaches back down into our “under the sun” lives and infuses meaning into every aspect of our lives. Because our meaning is built on God, not the shifting sand of us.

Our work has meaning because we do it onto the glory of God.

Our care for the poor and oppressed has great meaning because they are made in the image of God. Jesus said when we do it to the least of them, we do it unto him.

Solomon says it’s a gift from God to be able to enjoy life. To enjoy the micro-miracles of life like a beautiful sunset or a great cup of coffee. To treasure our loved ones and enjoy our friends. Jesus makes these things full of meaning – no smoke because what we do here for Jesus lasts into eternity.

Paul writes: Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (meaningless).1 Cor. 15:58. He's probably thinking of Ecclesiastes. He’s not contradicting Ecclesiastes because the work of the Lord reaches above the sun to Christ's eternal kingdom.

Life under the sun – if that was all there was – would be meaningless. But Christ came to tell us that there is much more. Abundant life, eternal life, loved and cherished by our heavenly Father only possible by the gift of His Son Jesus. We’ll be celebrating all that Jesus did for us over the next two weeks. For the Christian all our hope is in Christ.

If you have never put your trust in Christ, I urge you not to wait. Ask him to be your Savior today. Let's pray.