Better a handful with quietness than both hands full, together with toil and grasping for the wind.
Ecclesiastes 6:4
Sometimes life seems to be a race to see how much we can get. We fill our houses up with things. We buy toys and more toys for our kids (because they are never satisfied with them for long). We buy cars, go on trips, buy more things for our houses until they are overflowing and we have to take things to the goodwill. Then while we are at the goodwill we buy more stuff. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff. .... If we are not careful that lead us down a road of dissatisfaction even while we have everything. Having an eternal perspective on our lives and the things that God has entrusted us too can help us to live a life of satisfaction.
King Solomon is credited with writing Ecclesiastes. From the beginning of the book, he had been writing about the futility of wasting life with things that don't make a difference. He was one of the richest men to have lived. He spent a majority of his life acquiring things, but in the end he wrote that everything in life was useless without God.
In today's passage, Solomon encourages us to live without struggling to get everything. It is an attitude of gratitude that changes the way we think about life. We are always being trained that we don't have enough. TV and social media always present to us the idea that we need this next item, thing, or person to make us happy. But God wants us to seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness. When we put our eyes on eternity, we realize that all these things are not going with us. Nobody gets to take their stuff with them when they pass from this life. And when people are passing away, all that stuff is meaningless. In the clarity of death, we realize that life is about relationships.
It doesn't mean that God wants us to be poor or vagabonds. God gives us the ability to get riches. He just doesn't want things and stuff to come before Him. He wants to be our first love and He wants us to hunger and thirst for Him. When we do, then we won't run around trying to fill our lives with stuff. We will find ourselves satisfied with Him and filled to overflowing with His goodness and love which will be rivers of living water flowing into the lives of others--and then we will be the richest people in all the world!
Blessings to you!
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