Plugging In

I had an Ecclesiastes moment as I was flossing my teeth last night. I was thinking about work and how ultimately meaningless it is. I looked around the bathroom — at the decor, the brushes, the pumice stones, the shampoo — and then my mind moved into the rest of the house and all the stuff we have and how all of it is meaningless.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t a depressing moment. If everything is meaningless, we’re all on level ground and one position is no better than the next. It makes no difference if I’m a secretary or a doctor, if I have a bigger house and a better car. I’m no better off, ultimately, than the unemployed person down the street or the homeless man downtown. Meaninglessness puts everything into perspective.

It wasn’t a wholly positive experience, because if everything is meaningless and we are all on the same level, I wonder what the point of it all is. There isn’t, really. Which is precisely, I think, why the writer of Ecclesiastes urges us to eat, drink and be merry — pleasure may be as meaningless as everything else, but it’s still pleasure....

At that moment it hit me: relationships have meaning. And love, which exists only within relationship, has meaning. And if God is love and is, therefore, relational, then the most meaningful thing is relationship with God.

[via The Eagle and Child]