meaningless

Image borrowed from Sixty-Six Clouds: Word Cloud Bible at www.identity33.com

"Meaningless! Meaningless!"

says the Teacher. 

"Utterly meaningless! 

Everything is meaningless." 

Ecclesiastes 1:2

I don't know if it's wrong to have favorites, but Ecclesiastes is one of my favorite books of the Bible. And this is why. 

This was the original draft of my blog post:

This summer has been a lesson in disappointed expectations.

In my parent's house, you will find a futon, a sofa sleeper, a full bed, a coffee table, three desks, two dressers, three lamps, a coffee grinder, and several bookshelves, all to my name. Over the last few months (well, more like years), I have been stealthily amassing furniture, waiting anxiously for the day I could move out on my own. I was sure that day would come this summer. I had a roommate lined up, a place picked out, and an application completed. But unfortunately, the thing that always seems to happen, happened: something came up. Something came up and she could no longer be my roommate. And now I'm back to square one. Except now I have way more crap.

My parents like to tease me about it. "So you've got a futon and a couch and all these things--have you thought about finding someone to live with?" or "Why don't you go on that Facebook thing and find some more friends?" I feel that they have the right, seeing as they are currently harboring me and all of my possessions. Besides, I think the situation is comical as well. And I do realize I could venture out and live on my own. In fact, I'd love to. I just don't know if I could afford it. And I'm too scared to risk it.

But the summer has challenged my expectations in other ways as well. Zach and I were looking forward to the summer as the time of the year we'd finally get to hang out together more often. Zach's manager told him he'd be working full-time in the evening, and so I requested the closest thing to an evening shift at my job, 11:30 to 8, Sunday through Thursday. Two weeks into the summer, Zach's manager informed him that not only would he no longer be working full-time, but that his occasional shifts would often be morning shifts. So much for seeing each other. Now I'm stuck with what is possibly the worst placement of 8.5 hours of work. Bleh.

Zach isn't the only person I'm not seeing as often as I'd like. One of my best friends, Janie, will be leaving the country this fall, possibly never to return. And I've seen her once since May. My good friend Stacy was in town from South Carolina for an entire week this month, and I was so consumed with planning for a camp that I forgot she was here until it was too late.

So here I am. The summer is half over. I spent the first half of the summer planning a camp, and will spend the second half building an enormous website with a friend that I volunteered to make for free. I'm not complaining--both of those tasks I gladly signed up for and am happy to do. But when everything adds up, this summer is nowhere near what I had depended on.

This is the summer of seeing everyone around me graduate and move on, or get married, or get engaged, or move out. Do I necessarily want all of those things? No. But do I feel left behind like a selfish little child? Yes.


There, that was the blog post. What a pathetic, whining rant of a post that was. And then somehow I thought of Ecclesiastes (thanks Holy Spirit). I cruised over to BibleGateway.com, and Ecclesiastes slapped me in my stupid face (to steal a phrase from Zach).

 
Ecclesiastes 3:22 "So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?"

I think that God is using this summer to hammer into me the lesson that you can't count on the future. The present is really all that matters, and even that is meaningless when not working for God. The past is inaccessible and the future is known only to God, so just do what you can to live for Him now.