Look Up (Ecclesiastes 2)

It’s the life we all envy. A myriad of pleasures, projects and purposes. A life charting its course in abundance, without seeming hinderance or challenge. Life ballooning with happiness.

Life lived to full.

Isn’t it what we all want? Whether we declare it boldly to the world, or hanker for it silently? Perhaps it’s the thirst to be known. Maybe it’s the insatiable appetite for pleasure. Or the relentless pursuit of work or busyness, as we chase balloons of fullness for ourselves.

We each have our own chase. And as the years turn to decades, the chase gathers momentum and pace, as we see more of life already lived, than has yet to be lived.

Until.

Until the next Ecclesiastes goad punctures it’s swelling fullness.

Like sharp teeth, the weight of eternity pierces each balloon of labour and leisure, leaving a trail of questions:

What is the point? Will I ever have lived life truly to the full?

What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labour under the sun?

The more I sit in this book, the more I appreciate how much I need its goads. Without them, I’m on this toilsome treadmill called life, with little sight of what to do in the face of futility. With little wisdom for when my plans and desires fail to deliver the ever-so-slippery satisfaction I am hankering for.

As the goad perforates, the balloon deflates. Its glossy surface no longer shines with promise. The goad ruptures the veneer, exposing my chase of the wind. The contents of my striving is but a mere breath, wrapped up in shiny plastic.

And yet this goad also beckons me to look up. To look up to the one who has given me everything. To look up to the one in whom ‘God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.’ To look up and learn, ever so slowly, that life is gift, not gain.

I look up. And I consider the one who left the fullness of heaven and came so that I may have life, and have it to the full. What a gift.