Life Now

I have always been impressed by the writings of Solomon and more recently drawn to his statement on life being full of vanity (Ecclesiastes 1). As i pondered the loss of a recent member of our church, i reflected on what Solomon meant. I presume his conclusion was not that life was pointless but that it could be pointless if we lived if from the right perspective and with the wrong motives and drivers.

I imagine living long and having nothing to show for it. I imagined having something to show for the long life we lived but having the wrong things on show. I allowed myself to imagine into the next life; contemplating what answers we should have for the one to whom we must give account for this gift of life we have today. I observed that as our friend departed this world, he took nothing with him - no friends, no money, no notes, no certificates, nothing. I have since concluded that if we came into this world with no material possessions and indeed depart with none, it must mean that everything we have acquired whilst on earth must not be for collection but for distribution.

On the other side of life as we know it, we will and must give an account of what we acquired and distributed on earth whilst we lived. Life is about acquiring for distribution; even the things we self-adorn with must have a distributive element in them otherwise we would have lost the meaning and purpose for which we have been given/permitted them by God.

Freely we have received, freely we must now give (Matthew 10:8). In life we are not possessors of anything but simply custodians, distributors of everything.