Now you can’t really summarize on life, because life is no more the same then it is different for each and every one of us. I’m always taxed with thoughts on the purpose of life. Or maybe another way to look on that, is how to live a life of purpose. Look at yourself in the mirror. Look at your friends, your family, our world. What drives us? Many things do. Are they good or bad? What is our reasoning behind these things? I’ll hit at one because it’s always pushed to the forefront in my life. Possesions. What we have. What we consume. Is it human nature to live like this or did one day we put love and being humble aside, and decide we always had to have more than our neighbor? Do you beleive in God’s creation of the earth or do you beleive in evolution? Did either of those two things create greed? Did man create greed? Was it human nature in the ‘cave age’ that created greed out of a need for survival? Or did we make the cave man up, and in times of need is it not true that we are better off when we stick together, with words like share and love?
What if life was looked at and defined by what we gave away. How much we gave ourselves away. I beleive that all of us at one point in our life have been caught up in the problem of chasing what we believe to be the riches of the world. Some succeed, some fail. Both lead to the same end. An end where all will be left behind; and end which bluntly tells us how foolish we were to be chasing after the wind during our days. How much you give not how much you have.
Ecclesiastes 2:17-26
…What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which lavors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest.
…I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me
…A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for witout him, who can truly eat or find enjoyment? To the man who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness, but to the sinner he gives the task of gathering and storing up wealth to hand it over to the one who pleases God.
This all sounds a bit familiar. Maybe because Mathew was getting at it in 6:19-21
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Jump on me for the idea if you want, but keep in mind that no where in the above does it say that it is bad, “to have”; or that God wouldn’t be pleased if you have more than someone else. What I’m saying is don’t measure yourself to your wealth rather to your ability to humble yourself and be thankful for what you have.