What's the Point?

 "'Meaningless! Meaningless!' says the Teacher. 'Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.' What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?" Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 3

    Have you ever watched ants toil as they build their home? Push a few grains of sand back in the hole with your thumb and watch how tenaciously they scurry to fix it. Back and forth; up and down; grain after grain. Why bother? Does anybody care? What's the point?

    Every day, at the sound of the alarm, my feet tiredly swing toward the bathroom door. Wash my face; brush my teeth; put on my uniform. Like the ant, it's grain after grain.

    What drives people, especially those crazy Christians? Day after day, they read that Book, tune into those boring broadcasts, bow their heads talking to the air and repeatedly drive to that building with a cross on the peak. Day after day, grain after grain until, even like John the Baptist, we ourselves may ask of Jesus, "Are you the One who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" (Luke 7:19)

    Have you ever felt like that laboring ant, toiling toward some invisible end? What if it's not real and your faith is in vain? How do you know? Why did Noah spend 120 years building an ark, looking like a kook to his neighbors? What made the Magi (supposedly "wise men") follow a star in search of a baby? Why did seasoned fishermen leave their livelihoods among their nets to follow an itinerant Preacher? Why did Billy Graham leave his home, time after time, to traipse across six continents? What caused Mother Teresa to labor amongst the poorest of the poor? Why on earth did the Ten Boom family risk life and limb to hide Jewish people within the walls of their home? What's the point?

    I'll tell you: It's the empty grave! We serve a risen Savior who's in the world today. If Jesus had just been a good soul, a kindly preacher who helped people and was killed for his trouble, then why did his followers still keep spreading his gospel under the threat of death? Allow a Pharisee named Gamaliel to answer that: "Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail, But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." (Acts 5: 38, 39)

    "Grain after grain." we don't labor in vain, rather we press on toward our heavenly prize: eternal life! We join beleaguered Job in proclaiming: 

"I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end, He will stand on the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" Job 19: 25-27

"Oh, there will be a day when all will bow before Him;

There will be a day when death will be no more.

Standing face-to-face with He who died and rose again;

Holy, Holy is the Lord!

And every prayer we prayed in desperation,

The songs of faith, we sang through doubt and fear;

In the end, we'll see that it was worth it

When He returns to wipe away our tears."

-Hymn of Heaven, by Phil Wickham