Praise the Lord for another fabulous day in
His Kingdom. It is filled with His promises and paved with his grace,
surrounded with His loving kindness and tender mercies. We were able
to face time with Sunita in Bangkok several times. The Lord
blessed her time with His favor. She is flying back Washington today,
and will be back home tomorrow morning. One
of our young friends, Ben, is retiring today from law enforcement
services. I married him with his bride and baptized and
confirmed their children, who love the Lord. One of them is in university
and the other one is entering college this fall. Praise the Lord for the
way He endues with talents and gifts that we can use on earth to serve Him and
glorify His name.
I read a story about a rich American businessman who, while vacationing in Mexico, was disturbed to find a fisherman just sitting lazily beside his boat. "Why aren't you out there fishing?", he asked. "Because I've caught enough fish for today," said the fisher-man. "Why don't you catch more fish than you need?", the rich man asked. "What would I do with them?" "You could earn more money," came the impatient reply, "and buy a better boat so you could go deeper and catch more fish. You could purchase better nets, catch even more fish, and make more money. Soon you'd have a fleet of boats and be rich like me." The fisherman asked, "Then what would I do?" "You could sit down and enjoy life," said the industrialist. "What do you think I'm doing now?" the fisherman replied.
In the Book of Ecclesiastes we read about the quest for life and pleasure. Ecclesiastes is an autobigraphical narrative of king Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived. It is a self disclousre by the wisest king about his hunger, thirst, and daily issues. The first chapter revealed Solomon as he looked for the meaning of life. Solomon described the search that he was going through. He was searching for relief from the futility of life through pleasure. He actually catalogued for us the different ways in which he pursued pleasure. He pursued possibilities that he investigated: alcohol, comedy, self-motivated building projects, entertainment, servants, music, and sex. Solomon had everything necessary to carry out his grand experiment. He had almost unlimited resources, money, and time.
“So I became great and excelled more than all who were before me in Jerusalem. Also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure, For my heart rejoiced in all my labor; And this was my reward from all my labor.” “Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done And on the labor in which I had toiled; And indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind.”
Solomon eventually faced up to his situation and his life as it really was, and he found it only transitory and meaningless. He found no lasting satisfaction. That is how God designed us in that if we were able to find lasting satisfaction in earthly pleasure, we would never recognize our need for God. Ecclesiastes is in the Bible, not to make us depressed or discourage us but to drive us back to God.
According to the Word of the Lord, the invitation is to turn from drinking from the “broken cisterns that can hold no water” unto the Lord, “the fountain of living waters” (Jeremiah 2:23). The promise given by the Lord is that if one drinks from him, the water that quenches our thirst will go on forever, a spring welling up to eternal life. (John 4:13-14)
The wonderful good News is: “For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8-) God adopts us as his own. What Jesus promises is not temporary gratification but lasting joy. He promises a place with Him, in whose presence is fullness of joy forever.
In Christ,
Brown
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