Chasing the Wind | Ecclesiastes 1:12-2:26
Brian Hedges | August 30, 2026
Let me invite you to turn in Scripture to the book of Ecclesiastes. We’re going to be in Ecclesiastes 1-2. If you’re following along in the Bibles provided in the chair in front of you, it’s page 553. Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes.
As a matter of conviction here at Redeemer Church, we don’t use secular songs for our worship. There are some churches who do so, and they have their reasons for doing that. I can’t imagine that we ever would do that at Redeemer Church, but if I were ever to be tempted, today might have been the day. The song that I would have been tempted to use is the song from that Irish rock band U2, the lyrics:
“I have spoke with the tongue of angels,
I have held the hand of the devil.
It was warm in the night,
I was cold as a stone,
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” That’s essentially what Qoheleth, the Solomon-like figure who gave us the book of Ecclesiastes, that’s essentially what he is saying in Ecclesiastes 1-2.
Last week we saw that life is a breath. It’s fleeting. We saw that this key word, the Hebrew word hevel, often translated “vanity” in English, actually has a very concrete meaning. It means a breath, a mist, a vapor. It’s like a bubble; it is fleeting. It’s here today, it’s gone tomorrow.
That interpretation matters immensely for this book, because it means that the primary message of this book is not that life is meaningless, but rather, life is transient. Life is fleeting. It is unbearably brief and it is impossible to grasp.
As Brian Borgman says in his very good book Don’t Waste Your Breath, “The book of Ecclesiastes is not wrestling with the apparent meaninglessness of life, but rather with the brevity of life and all the pain and mystery that brevity brings.”
Today, our focus is going to be Ecclesiastes 1:12 through the end of chapter two, 2:26. This is the first major section of this book, following the preface or prologue that we studied last week. But this section connects to that opening from Ecclesiastes, from Qoheleth, the author of this book, especially verses 2-3, and I want to begin reading there.
“Merest breath, says the Preacher, merest breath! All is mere breath.” And I am going to use “mere breath” as the translation for hevel, rather than “vanity” or “meaninglessness.”
“Merest breath, says the Preacher, merest breath! All is mere breath. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?”
That question in verse 3 is the driving question of this book. What do we gain from our toil and our striving in this earthly life? What do we gain? What will last? What do we take with us? That’s the question.
What follows in the next two chapters is the record of Qoheleth’s quest for gain. St. Augustine famously said, “O Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
You could essentially write that as a banner over Ecclesiastes 1-2. And as we work through these chapters, we will follow Qoheleth’s experience in three steps, steps that we can also trace in our own spiritual journeys. Those steps are:
1. The Quest for Rest
2. The Restlessness that Results
3. The Wisdom of Resting in God
1. The Quest for Rest
Here’s where we’re going to cover the bulk of the text in chapters 1-2, as we follow along Qoheleth’s experiment. He is trying everything out, looking for something. He’s looking for something.
We see this introduced in verses 12-14. “I the Preacher—” again, this is Qoheleth, the philosopher, the teacher, the sage. “I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem.” This is why some people think Solomon wrote the book. We can say at the very least that he is impersonating Solomon, and there are many resonances with the story of Solomon. But whether Solomon was the author or another person was the author, either way this is God’s word that comes to us with great wisdom.
“I the Preacher have been king over Israel in Jerusalem. And I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is [mere breath] and a striving after wind.”
That’s another key phrase in Ecclesiastes, “striving after wind.” Literally, the scholars tell us it means herding the wind, like trying to herd sheep or herd cattle. But you can’t herd the wind. You can’t channel the wind. You can’t direct the wind. You can’t get hold of the wind. So it’s a chasing of the wind. It’s an image that conveys the impossibility and the futility of the very attempt.
So this is what Qoheleth said he set out to do, and we see how he does this in three stages in the verses that follow.
(1) First of all, the vexation of wisdom. Look at verses 15-18.
“What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.
“I said in my heart, ’I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me, and my heart has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’ And I applied my heart to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a striving after wind. [Listen to this, verse 18.]
“For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”
Now this is quite interesting. This is Hebrew wisdom literature, but it is a slightly different voice than we find in, say, the book of Proverbs. In the book of Proverbs, the path of wisdom is a very concrete, practical path of following the wisdom of God in order to live the best possible life. But Ecclesiastes gives us a slightly different perspective.
Here is someone who applied his heart to know wisdom, and what he found was not peace of heart, but vexation of his spirit. “In much wisdom is much vexation. He who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” The more he learned, the sadder he became. The vexation of wisdom.
(2) Then, in Ecclesiastes 2:1-11, Ecclesiastes or Qoheleth continues this experiment as he seeks out all manners of pleasure. And what he learns is the impermanence of all pleasure.
I want to just show you the sequence before we read it together so that you can notice it. He works through all the different categories of pleasure that are known to human beings. He speaks of pleasure, laughter, wine. He speaks of great works, and he describes the building of houses and the planting of vineyards and gardens, parks and pools. He speaks in terms of power, when he purchases slaves. He has great possessions, great wealth, silver and gold—arts, as he brings singers into his palace—and sex, as he had many concubines.
Now listen for all those categories as we just read through chapter 2:1-8. He said,
“I said in my heart, ’Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.’ [Here’s his experiment.] But behold, this also was [mere breath, the impermanence of it]. I said of laughter, ’It is mad,’ and of pleasure, ’What use is it?’ I searched with my heart how to cheer my body with wine—my heart still guiding me with wisdom—and how to lay hold on folly, till I might see what was good for the children of man to do under heaven during the few days of their life. I made great works. I built houses and planted vineyards for myself. I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees. I made myself pools from which to water the forest of growing trees.”
Now just pause right there for a minute. “I made all manner of fruit trees.” Does that language evoke anything for your imagination from Scripture? “All manner of fruit trees.” All manner of trees that are in a garden. Here’s Qoheleth; he’s trying to regain paradise. It’s paradise retried. There are all kinds of Eden imagery here. He’s trying to recover what was lost in the garden. That’s his attempt. Verse 7:
“I bought male and female slaves, and had slaves who were born in my house. I had also great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and provinces. I got singers [there’s arts, the aesthetic life], both men and women, and many concubines, the delight of the sons of man.”
Here’s someone who had the resources to conduct an experiment that most people could only imagine.
Do you ever wonder, “If I had enough money to do whatever I wanted—if I could have the perfect partner, the perfect spouse, sexual freedom for whatever I desired; if I could accomplish something important with my life; if I could build whatever I wanted to build; if I could leave a legacy behind; if I could just arrange my life according to the desires of my heart, then I would be satisfied”? And Qoheleth says, “I did have that power, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
Look at verse 9. Here’s the conclusion.
“So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. And whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure, for my heart found pleasure in all my toil, and this was my reward for all my toil.”
This is bringing us back to Ecclesiastes 1:3. “What gain does someone get from his toil?
And here’s his answer, verse 11.
“Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was [mere breath] and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.”
That’s his conclusion. All of this toil, it’s just a mere breath. The fleeting life, the impermanence of pleasure, it is striving after wind. Impossible, impossible.
Of course, this isn’t merely Solomon’s or Qoheleth’s problem. This is the human condition, isn’t it? It’s the human condition.
C.S. Lewis called this the “inconsolable longing,” this deep longing, this deep desire in our hearts that no experience on earth can satisfy. Blaise Pascal observed, “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”
This is what drives every human being: the search for happiness, the quest for rest, the desire to lay hold of something, something that makes sense of our lives. Even people who hang themselves, Pascal says, are essentially trying to decrease their misery. They just want the pain to end. They want the pain to end. But the driving motivation is the search for happiness.
This is what drives all of us in our lives. Why do we get married? Because we think this spouse will fill our hearts with joy, make us happy. We pursue careers or children or friendship or money or success or recognition, comfort, entertainment—all of these things—we pursue them with this one driving goal, to find rest, joy, satisfaction in our lives.
Even the destructive choices that we sometimes make—the addictions—even those things are misguided attempts to escape misery. Different objects, but the same basic quest. This was Qoheleth’s quest.
(3) He found the vexation of wisdom, he found the impermanence of pleasure, and then one more thing that brings him right to the brink of despair: he discovered the certainty of death.
Verse 12 seems to turn a corner. He weighs out the differences between wisdom and folly. Verse 12:
“So I turned to consider wisdom and madness and folly. For what can the man do who comes after the king? Only what has already been done. Then I saw that there is more gain in wisdom than in folly, as there is more gain in light than in darkness.”
Note that, that’s important. He contrasted these two ways of life and he says the way of wisdom is better than the way of foolishness.
Then verse 14 is basically a proverb. “The wise person has his eyes in his head, but the fool walks in darkness.” He’s saying the wise person sees; the fools are blind, they’re walking in the dark. Wisdom is better than folly.
“And yet…”
And yet—here’s the rub. Verse 14, second half:
“And yet I perceived that the same event happens to all of them. Then I said in my heart, ’What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?’ And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool!”
The certainty of death.
Borgman puts it like this: “Although wisdom is better than folly, wisdom encounters a massive limitation. It cannot stop death.”
This is the great equalizer. This is the great existential crisis for every human being who has lived. This is the greatest threat in your own life. You’re going to die. Death is inevitable. Death is unstoppable. Death visits both the wise and the fool, it visits both the believer and the unbeliever. This inescapable, stubborn fact of our mortality will bring every attempt to find rest and secure lasting gain in this world to a standstill. No matter how good your life is, it’s going to end.
2. The Restlessness that Results
That’s what leads to Qoheleth’s restlessness—the quest for rest. He is confronted with the vexation of wisdom, the impermanence of pleasure, the certainty of death, and what results is restlessness. Point number two, verse 17.
“So I hated life, because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is [mere breath] and a striving after wind.”
So this is the darkest part of the chapter, the verses that follow here. This is where Qoheleth comes to the brink of despair, the very cliff edge of hopelessness.
This is why some people read the book of Ecclesiastes and think, “Man, this is a dark book; this is a depressing book,” because Qoheleth really is wrestling with something that brings him to the brink of despair. Pick it up in verse 18.
“I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is [mere breath]. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun [there it is], because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is [mere breath] and a great evil. What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils beneath the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest. This also is [mere breath].”
Do you see it? The quest for gain, for profit, and yet even in the night his heart does not rest. A restless heart. He still hasn’t found what he’s looking for.
He pursued wisdom and found it vexation. He tried every conceivable form of pleasure and found that it was fleeting. He weighed wisdom in the balance with folly, and then he remembered his own mortality, and it left him with a restless heart. Even in the night, his heart does not rest. Because life is fleeting. Life is fleeting. It’s a breath. Even the best-lived life ends in death.
Brothers and sisters, this passage is meant to press home to our hearts the reality of our condition, and it’s something all of us realize and recognize if we will just slow down and be still long enough to acknowledge it. Our problem is that we’re going, going, going. We’re distracting ourselves constantly—a constant stream of images and information, music and video and words and comments and likes. Something is always filling our minds and we don’t just stop long enough to reflect on the reality of the human condition.
That’s what this book of the Bible is teaching us to do. And it just shows us that our lives are just momentary, and even if we live the best possible life we can imagine, that life is going to end. Even if we are wildly successful, it’s all going to end in death. And nothing will save us from death, nothing that we can do for ourselves. The attempt is like chasing the wind, like trying to control the uncontrollable.
I think Ecclesiastes was written in part to help us make sense of our experiences of disappointment in life. I know you’ve all experienced this.
I started feeling disappointment before I knew what it was. I remember very vaguely—one of my earliest memories, when I was maybe four or five years old—the first time I was taken to a movie theater, by my parents, to see the Disney film Pinocchio. And about all I remember is that I cried when it was over, and I cried because it was over. It was over, and I was sad.
I remember being disappointed the first time I went to Disneyland, not because there’s anything wrong with Disneyland, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations.
Have you experienced this? Have you ever had post-holiday blues? You look forward to this vacation, and then you get back, and there’s kind of a thud the week after. Or you look forward to Christmas, and by Christmas afternoon, kids, you’re kind of experiencing boredom with all the new stuff.
We’ve all experienced this. We experience this in the small disappointments of life, and there’s something in us saying, “Okay, is that all? What’s next?”
But we also can experience this in the bigger, larger-scale issues of life. When you finally get a degree, and then you settle into a career and it’s not what you thought it would be. Or when you finally get married, and you kind of get past the honeymoon stage, and you recognize that marriage is not always easy. Or you’ve been looking forward to having your first child, and then that child comes, and you realize, “Man, this is a lot more work than I thought it was going to be.”
The problem, of course, is not that it’s always bad things that we look forward to. They are sometimes good things. They’re great! These are wonderful aspects of our lives, but they pass, they slip away, and they cannot bear the weight of the expectations that we put upon them.
Let me give you an illustration from one of the most remarkable films that I have seen. The film is Richard Linklater’s film Boyhood. It follows a boy named Mason from childhood to college, and the film was famously filmed over a period of twelve years using the same actors. So in this two-hour, forty-five-minute film, you actually watch Mason grow up.
Now, I only mention this with a qualified recommendation. This is a film that is not a Christian film; it has plenty of R-rated language, so watch with discretion. But over the course of this film, you get the experience of watching someone grow up, and near the end, when Mason is packing up to leave for college, his mother, named Olivia, just breaks down. She just has a breakdown. And she starts crying and recounting the milestones in her life—her relationships, her children, earning her degree, building a career, and now she’s sending her son out into the world, and through tears she just says, “I just thought there would be more.”
“I just thought there would be more.” It’s a Qoheleth’s experience. Most of us have experienced moments like that, or if you haven’t yet, you will: a moment where you say, “I just thought there would be more to this life than there is.”
What are we to do with that experience?
C.S. Lewis pointed out two wrong ways to deal with it. He said there is the fool’s way. This is what a fool does: the fool just keeps trying to get something better. “That marriage isn’t working, I’ll get a new marriage. That job isn’t working, I’m going to try to find a better job. This house is disappointing, I want to build a bigger house. I want a faster car. I want something nicer. Nicer, faster, bigger, better.” That’s the way of the fool: always chasing for that which will not ultimately satisfy. It’s the fool’s way.
The second wrong path, Lewis says, is the way of the disillusioned, sensible man. This is the person who essentially says, “Oh yeah, those youthful dreams of happiness don’t exist. You’re not going to find that. Quit dreaming, quit longing, quit desiring. Just live your life.” That person just becomes cynical.
Is that what Ecclesiastes is trying to teach us, or is there actually something more? We find the answer at the end of this chapter, verses 24-26, which leads us to point three, the wisdom of resting in God.
3. The Wisdom of Resting in God
Let’s read these last three verses. Verse 24:
“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is [mere breath] and a striving after wind.”
I don’t know if that strikes you as a little surprising. After everything we’ve just seen, Qoheleth comes to the brink of despair and says, “I gave my heart to despair, I hated life. I hated life.” It’s all mere breath, it’s all striving after the wind. And then he says, “There is nothing better than for a person that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.”
It’s a surprising turn. This is why this book is challenging. How do you make sense of this? How do you make sense of what he’s saying?
He’s not saying, “Okay, it’s all pointless, it doesn’t matter what you do.” That’s not what he’s saying. That’s the worldview of the nihilist; that’s not Qoheleth.
He’s also not saying, “Everything in this world is evil, therefore hole up in a little cave or a hut, spend your life thinking about heaven, and turn your eyes away from everything in the world.” That’s the path of the ascetic. It’s often the religious response. That’s also not what he says.
He doesn’t say, “Stop eating, stop drinking, stop working, stop loving, stop enjoying.” He doesn’t say that.
He says, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.” That’s what he says What in the world does he mean?
Let me read you an explanation from Barry Webb, Old Testament scholar, and I find this very helpful. Essentially, Webb shows that there is a shift from a focus on trying to gain something, the quest to gain something in this life, there’s a shift from that to a receptive posture of receiving life as God’s gift to us. Here’s Webb. He says,
“The possibility of enjoyment returns significantly only when the quest for profit or gain is given up altogether and replaced by the notion of gift. Opportunities to eat, drink, and find satisfaction in one’s work, when they come, are not human achievements but divine gifts, and are to be enjoyed as such. They are only palliatives, to be sure, for they too are hevel and will slip from our grip like everything else, but that is no reason to reject them.”
In other words, he’s saying stop trying to extract permanence from what God has made temporary. Stop trying to fill the void in your heart with worldly ambitions and pursuits. Stop trying to seize your life as something you gain; instead, receive it as God’s gracious gift.
Let me give you another illustration, this time from the poet George Herbert. He wrote a poem called “The Pulley,” which has four stanzas, and I’m going to read these over the next few minutes as we work towards the conclusion of the sermon. I’m going to read the first two stanzas, and then I want to shift into application. There is practical application for you this morning.
But listen to what George Herbert said. He imagines God at creation holding a glass, a container that has every conceivable human blessing.
“When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
’Let us,’ said he, ’pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.’
“So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.
Here’s the picture. God is giving all of these gifts—strength and beauty and honor and pleasure—but he holds one blessing back: rest. He makes a stay; he stops. He holds back rest. “Rest in the bottom lay.”
Herbert, of course, is channeling St. Augustine. “Lord, you made us for yourself. Our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”
This is what we have to do; we have to learn to rest in God. How do you do that? Let me give you three practical things.
(1) Number one, we must accept our condition. It starts right here, recognizing I am mortal, I am a creature; my life is a mere breath. You cannot grasp the wind, you cannot control your life, you cannot make straight what God has made crooked. We can’t make temporary things last forever. We have to accept it. You accept that.
You cannot change the basic nature of this fleeting life; you have to accept it.
Listen, that must get translated into very concrete ways of living. Let me just give you one.
This is something every parent has to do, and I think it’s actually one of the hardest, most difficult transitions for parents to make. When children begin to grow up, parents have to release; they have to let go. You can’t shelter them forever, you can’t live their lives for them, you can’t live the life that you wish you had lived through them. You can’t try to fix all the mistakes you made through their lives. You have to let them go. And you can’t hold on to an earlier stage of parenting.
There were moments when we were raising our kids—they’re so wonderful, and there were moments where I just kind of wanted to freeze everything, just want to freeze it. “This is perfect.” You can’t freeze it. It comes, it goes, and you have to let it go. You have to accept this is life, this is life. You cannot hold on to these momentary, temporary moments, as good as they are. You receive them as a gift of God, but you accept the condition of this life. We must accept our condition.
(2) Then secondly, we must receive God’s gifts. This was the breathing lesson last week: receive life as God’s gift. And we receive all of God’s gifts. We receive food and drink and work. We receive marriage and children and friendship. We receive beauty, art and literature. We can receive these things, but we don’t set our hearts upon them.
In fact, even the ability to enjoy these things comes from God. Qoheleth says that. He says, “To find enjoyment in these things is from the hand of God. For apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and joy.”
He just means that the person who by grace has come to accept the sovereignty of God over life and to trust in God, to that person is given the capacity to enjoy God’s gifts.
Our great danger is not in God’s gifts themselves, it’s in adoring God’s gifts instead of God himself. It’s putting the creature in the place of the creator.
Here’s Herbert again. “Rest in the bottom lay.” Why? F
“’For if I should,’ said he,
’Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.”
That’s the danger, adoring the gifts instead of the giver. Resting in nature rather than the God of nature. And if you do that, you lose it all. You lose it all! You lose the gifts and you lose God.
(3) That means, thirdly, we must find our rest in God. More specifically, we must find our rest in Christ.
Listen to our conversation partners one more time. Augustine: “O Lord, you made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
C.S. Lewis: “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”
And now Jesus. Jesus, who said, “Come to me, all who labor [or toil] and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11).
There it is, the promise of rest in Christ, and it comes to us through the gospel.
The book of Ecclesiastes in many ways is like a tract that is written to give someone to prepare the way for receiving the good news of the gospel. It’s like an evangelistic tract. In fact, one author has suggested that Ecclesiastes should be the first book in all of our printed New Testaments. Read Ecclesiastes first, and then the gospel begins to make sense.
Here it is. It’s the promise of rest.
How do Jesus’ words answer Qoheleth’s questions? Qoheleth was haunted by the brevity of life and by the certainty of death. And here is Jesus, who is life incarnate, the one who is himself the way, the truth and the life. And what does he do? He faces death for us. Jesus comes and he faces death as one of us, in our place—death, which the New Testament says is the last enemy. Jesus comes as the defeater of death. He comes as the one who through death destroys the one who has the power of death.
He vanquishes this great enemy. He breaks through this wall. He brings life and immortality to light. This death-defeating, grave-conquering king, he’s the one who says, “Come to me, and I will give you rest. You will find rest for your souls. I’ll give you the kind of rest that this fleeting life can never give.”
This is the whole point. You haven’t found what you’re looking for in this world. You haven’t found the rest that your heart longs for. You never will. You never will, until you look to Christ and you find it in him.
Okay, so the very end of Herbert’s poem; this is the last stanza, and I’m done. It’s the pulley. The poem is called “The Pulley.” What does a pulley do? It redirects something. God has given all these gifts, strength and beauty and wisdom and honor and pleasure, but he withheld rest so that the creature, human beings, would not adore the gifts instead of the giver, would not put the creation above the creator. Why? Here’s the answer.
“’Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.”
Weariness throws us into the arms of God. It was the experience of Qoheleth, it was the experience of Augustine, it was the experience of C.S. Lewis. It’s your experience, it’s mine. And what we learn is that God can use even this weariness, even the disappointments in life, even this sense, “I thought there would be more”; God can use that to throw us, to toss us into the loving embrace of God.
Jesus says, “Come to me; I will give you rest.” Let’s pray.
Lord, we come to you now in response to your invitation, and we come and acknowledge that we have sought for rest in things that ultimately could never satisfy. We have experienced the weariness, we’ve experienced the disappointment, we’ve known the vexation, we have asked the question ourselves, “Is there more?” And maybe some this morning are right on that cliff edge of despair as they wrestle with these things in their lives. So, Lord, my prayer this morning is that we would hear the words of Jesus, we would hear the invitation of Jesus to come and to find rest for our souls. Lord, I pray that you give us the wisdom and the perspective and the grace to accept our human condition, with all of its limitations; and then, rather than striving after the wind, to receive the good gifts you give as gifts—gifts that are temporary, good gifts nonetheless, but not those things in which we set our hearts’ joy; and instead that we would find our joy in Christ.
As we come to the table, may we come remembering that this is why Jesus died for us: to take our judgment, to take death in our place, and to give us the hope of eternal life. So, help us, Lord, now come to the table with faith and direct our desires to you. We pray this in Jesus’ name and for his sake. Amen.
