What! the whole of it meaningless?

(Charles Spurgeon)

"Behold, all is vanity!" Ecclesiastes 1:14

Nothing can fully satisfy a person, but the Lord's love and the Lord's own self. Saints have tried other pursuits, but they have been driven out of such foolish and fatal refuges.

Solomon, the wisest of men, was permitted to make experiments for us all, and to do for us what we must not dare to do for ourselves. Here is his testimony in his own words: "So I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind! Nothing was gained under the sun!" "Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless."

What! the whole of it meaningless? O favored monarch, is there nothing in all your wealth? Nothing in your wide dominion reaching even to the sea? Nothing in your glorious palaces? In all your music and dancing, and wine and luxury-is there nothing?
"Nothing!" he says, "but a chasing after the wind!"
This was his final verdict, when he had trodden the whole round of pleasure.

To embrace our Lord Jesus, to dwell in His love, and be fully assured of union with Him-this is all in all.

Dear reader, you need not try other forms of pleasure in order to see whether they are better than the Christian's. If you roam the world around, you will see no sights like a sight of the Savior's face! If you could have all the comforts of life, but lost your Savior-you would be most wretched. But if you possess Christ, though you should rot in a dungeon-you would find it a paradise! Though you should live in obscurity, or die with famine-yet you would be satisfied with the favor and goodness of the Lord!

"But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ!" Philippians 3:7-8