Day 7
“What does man gain from all his labor at which he toils under the sun?” Ecclesiastes 1:3
No one escapes the challenge of finding meaning and purpose in work. Most of us spend a minimum of 40 hours a week at our jobs and some unfortunately relate to the words of Solomon. "So I hated life because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me" (Ecclesiastes 2:17).
Some have to endure the same monotonous routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, going to bed, getting up, going to work, coming home, going to bed. "Meaningless!" says Solomon. What is missing here? Why does work zap the life and energy out of people? Solomon gives varying reasons. Work is endless and leads to nothing. It is like a hamster on a wheel, running fast and going nowhere. The more we work, the more we accumulate, which only gives us more to worry about. We can compete with others, but that only feeds our egos. Everything we work for is only going to be left to someone who has not earned it and will probably squander it. No wonder Solomon reflects a sense of futility, fatigue and failure about work when he says, "A fool's work wearies him; he does not know his way to town" (Ecclesiastes 10:15).
The one thing missing in Solomon's outlook is hope. Everything he does place some hope in, must come to an end. Jesus spoke about this when He said, "Do not work for food that spoils but for food that endures to eternal life" (John 6:27). Working for food that spoils will only ever temporarily satisfy, which is Solomon's observation. "All of man's efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied" (Ecclesiastes 6:7). Of course we eat frequently, but earth's activities need to intersect with heaven’s agenda.
Paul tells us, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving" (Colossians 3:23-24). We have a higher master and a higher goal than the physical material activity in which we must engage. Far from being meaningless, working with divine purpose brings energy and motivation with endless possibilities in how God may use us. We cannot measure what he is doing, but we trust our energies spent on a temporal level to be serving an eternal purpose.