Vanity: The Insatiable Pursuit of the Earthly

Solomon, the richest and wisest man to live, brings us some sound advice here. While God gives us many things to enjoy on our walks through this earth to our heavenly home they were never meant to be our soul’s pursuit – God is. Man’s greatest desire is for happiness yet it is foolishness to believe that one can obtain it by the mere enjoyments of this present world. They will always be found wanting. These things merely make men store up riches and pursue honors and promotions believing these will make them truly happy and content. Yet the reality demonstrates that this is far from true as acquiring these pursuits simply keeps us longing for more. Enough is never enough. They are all leaky cisterns unable to hold Living Water. We expect much more from them than they can yield. This treasure is found in God alone. He is the only One who can fully satisfy the longings of the human heart and soul. All other things are nice but not necessary.  

In truth, the world is much better in show than in substance. It will certainly prove vanity when death knocks at our door. The trinkets of the world cannot heal us, add a single hour to our lives, keep us from illness or cleanse us from a guilty conscious. It is only in Christ that one finds sufficiency, strength, satisfaction and true rest for our sin sick souls. As we cast our burdens and cares on Him, He promises to sustain us, causing us to stand because He is faithful and able to cause us to stand. When we seek to find our happiness in the created instead of the One Who created all things, satisfaction will elude us. While these are not bad in and of themselves, it is in placing them first in the life that should be shunned. The priority is Jesus – it is always Jesus. God will not share His rightful throne of our lives with anything or anybody. It is His. It is He that has made us and not we ourselves. We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.

Amazingly, we often live for the temporal seeking to feed our eternal souls mere husks, remaining spiritually starving. One of the prime acts of faith is to cast our souls on God as all sufficient to make us completely filled with contentment, honor, happiness and pleasure – all streams flowing from His all sufficient hand. Faith keeps our eyes focused onto Whom it belongs. It realizes all the world’s pomp cannot satisfy and eventually leads to emptiness at best. Quench the vanity of worldliness with Jesus. We are to keep our eyes fixed on Him, disciplining our emotions and going forth doing the next right thing for His glory and for our good. Remember, Satan lures with honey but in the end his bite is bitter.