Overbooked & OverwhelmedSample

We are fragmented people when our hearts are distracted. To be distracted is to be torn apart, absent-minded, frenzied, distraught, distressed, and panicked. When our sights are set on the world instead of fixed on the Word, we shouldn’t be surprised when we feel overwhelmed and like something is missing.

One person who knew exactly what this felt like was King Solomon. He was among the few who had it all—every flashy thing he could buy or take or own was his, every pleasure and every form of entertainment available at the snap of his fingers. But, as we read in Ecclesiastes, the book scholars speculate he wrote, he came not only to the end of his life but to the end of himself. . . .

Solomon was a man who had everything at his fingertips. I would bet that he admitted to being distracted many times in his life—distracted by building mansions, securing slaves, raising the finest livestock, hosting the best parties, accumulating gold, and meeting all the women he could ever want. But what was his conclusion at the end of it all? It was all a vapor, a fleeting thought, not anything that would truly satisfy. In Ecclesiastes 3:11 he wrote, “He [God] has put eternity into man’s heart.” All our striving and our craving as we jump from one thing to the next, it’s all just us searching for something lasting, something eternal: a satisfaction far beyond this life and its distractions. The things of God. Attachment to God.

Ecclesiastes 3 is a beautiful foreshadowing of the coming Savior who would hang on a tree for us. Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection were about wholeness. He died to seal up the God-shaped hole in each of our hearts, to restore the relationship that was severed in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve chose their own desires over their relationship with God. Sin had fractured not only who we were as souls have been wandering around, searching and longing, ever since Genesis. But the night our Savior was born, He brought an end to the fracture, a solution to the longing, an answer for our restless souls. Jesus conquered sin to bring His light to the world, giving us new hearts able to fix on Him.

Prayer

Lord, thank You for sending Jesus to restore my relationship with You. Please guide me and fill my longings with things that glorify You. Amen.