Coming Up Empty
I said in my heart, "Come now, I will test you with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure"; but surely, this also was vanity. —Ecclesiastes 2:1
It is not that unusual to pick up a newspaper, read an article, or turn on the news and learn that another celebrity has checked into rehab or another rock star has overdosed or committed suicide.
We have a hard time understanding how these beautiful people, these people who seem so perfect to us in their airbrushed photos and Tinseltown world, could be miserable. But they have the same problems we have. The difference is they have a lot of the things we just dream of having. Yet many of them have discovered the emptiness and futility of it.
The world offers a fleeting happiness that comes and goes. Its happiness depends entirely on personal circumstances. If things are going good, then you are happy. If things are going horribly, then you are miserable. But God offers you a happiness that will be there in spite of your circumstances. It does not come from what you have; it comes from who you know. The Bible says, "Happy are the people whose God is the Lord!" (Psalm 144:15).
The world tells you to take drugs, party, and get drunk—that's where it's at, they say. But God says, "And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit" (Ephesians 5:18).
Have you been settling for a cheap substitute? If so, you have been coming up empty. Maybe, like Solomon, you will conclude that it is meaningless. It is vanity. It is like a bubble that bursts or a wisp of a vapor. That is the conclusion everyone will eventually come to. So you can either take God's word for it, or you can learn it the hard way.
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