When I drive around, I think about things…

 This, my friends, is the car (that breaks down all the time) lovingly called rae-rae, ralphie, gary, ernie, airplane, baby….and everthing else you might call a car. It’s the place that I think in constantly (also sing, pray, and dance in, sometimes even yell or cry in). 

Today, one of things I thought about was why we put so much pressure on ourselves to achieve certain things. In the end, it really won’t matter what I got on my ACT or how many friends call me to hang out on the weekends. Next year alone will show that all of that from high school really didn’t matter, and I know this all too well having moved a few times. Nobody cares how  you were before or what you did. If you were popular…so what? If you were constantly being made fun of for a mistake you made in junior high….who cares?

So this is how my thought process started. It’s amazing how quickly our minds can jump from thing to thing isn’t it? But then I started thinking about things outside of high school. So you go to college- the whole focus is to graduate within a certain amount of time so you can find a decent job one day. Some people will also focus on finding a spouse.

Then what? Well, then you have a job, and maybe you got married. Then what? It’s time to start saving money up for a house and/or other worldly possessions. Okay, then what? Maybe look for some sort of promotion at work. And then? Hmm, maybe have a few kids. Then what? Well, it’s time to start saving more money for those kids because they can get real expensive and fast. Following that, you are just waiting for the day that they can talk, and then the day they can drive themselves places so you don’t have to, the day they move out, and the day they get married and get a job. Once you have all of that behind you “you’ve made it.” You live your life through your children and their children. Then you wait for the day you get to retire. After that you basically wait until the day you die and loved ones die. 

It’s as if all we are ever doing is waiting until we get to the next step in our lives and can’t wait to get out. Even in high school, “oh, I can’t wait to go to college”…and then so on and so forth.  Why? Why do we do it? It makes sense when the Bible says “Utterly Meaningless! Everything is Meaningless!” (Ecclesiastes 1:2) The chapter is really cool, but can be difficult to understand at first (or maybe it was just me that struggled with the concept) It almost sounds depressing to admit that you are just chasing after the wind and will not even be remembered for it. You will never “get there” so to speak. Our culture portrays this dream of being successful and satisfied, when in truth, you won’t be satisfied that way at all. Ever. This chapter in Ecclesiastes kinda lays it all out and says, “no, it’s meaningless, because you will never get to that point you keep running after.” Because guess what? That point doesn’t even exist, you just think it does.

This purpose of this chapter in the Bible really isn’t to be discouraging. It is just telling you to stop getting caught up in things that won’t matter in a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. There is absolutely no reason to. The only thing to make sure you have is God in your life.

All of this, I thought about while driving, and it wasn’t even that long of a drive. Then I questioned aloud, (seriously, people in cars next to me must think I am crazy) “What purpose is there to living if you don’t have God? How can someone even have the strength to go on without Him? I can’t even imagine that.” How can people live a life that is meaningless? The only thing truly meaningful in my life is God. Everything else is temporary and will eventually be destroyed. That just blows my mind, the idea of being without God. How empty.  That is when I thought to myself, I am definitely blessed. Then I thought, ugh, all of those people without Him.  No, I don’t want them to go on living thinking that there wasn’t anything else to life than the meaningless things. That would be awful.

And that is what I thought about in my car today on my way home from work.