Today is Evaluate Your Life Day.
From a secular standpoint, this is meant to be a day to take stock of where you are in life. How’s it going? Is it everything you’ve ever wanted and more? Have you achieved all your hopes and dreams? If you haven’t, now is your chance to reevaluate your life and do something about it!
That longing-filled desire for meaning—the knowledge that our lives have worth and purpose—is a universal, time-transcending truth. Everyone wants it. Everyone needs it. Without meaning, life seems so empty and… meaningless.
It’s what makes the Teacher’s forlorn, frustrated cry in the book of Ecclesiastes so jarring, so abrasively shocking to readers: “Meaningless! Meaningless! Utterly meaningless. Everything is meaningless!”
There’s truth in those words—a painful truth that many people want to ignore or reject. We can go our whole lives chasing after things—money, possessions, education, career advancement, whatever it may be—and the bitter reality is this: It’s never enough. Trying to find meaning in those things doesn’t provide anything with lasting worth.
Those things leave you wanting more because the emptiness inside only grows.
The Teacher seized upon that feeling of emptiness in the book of Ecclesiastes. He essentially said, “This is what’s wrong with people! If all we’re focused on is the here and now—if all we’re focused on is life under the sun—then the search for meaning really is just a meaningless chasing after the wind. We’ll never catch it. We’ll never find it. It can’t be done.”
How’s that for an “Evaluate Your Life Day” revelation?
It’s actually the very thing we need to hear. Without God, everything in life is meaningless. Jesus said it himself, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” (Mark 8:36). Wealth, riches, fame, worldly glory—none of it lasts. Nothing this side of heaven ever does.
The one thing that matters—the one thing that truly matters—is our relationship with God. That lasts. That can never be snatched away. That has meaning. That relationship is ours because of Jesus and what he’s done for us. The beautiful thing is, it’s what gives life meaning—to us and everything we do.
Consider the opening words to Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd. I lack nothing.”
In other words?
Dear Christian, life is no longer a meaningless pursuit—time spent chasing after the wind. We already have everything we need with God.
Thanks be to Jesus!
Philosophers, writers, and artists throughout history have concluded that life and its pursuits are meaningless. In many ways, they are correct. Yet when life is considered in the light of the gospel message, you will find true and deep meaning. To learn more about this and a practical guide to finding meaning in your life, check out Pastor Luke George Thompson’s Your Life Has Meaning: Discovering Your Role in an Epic Story.
Alex Brown is the marketing and content copywriter at Northwestern Publishing House. He has his Master of Divinity degree from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and enjoys reading, writing, and spending time in God’s creation.