Please read E1. Meaning to the Meaningless before reading any other reflections on Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 2:1-11

Solomon filled his life with wine, women and song. He was not the first, and one look at the world we live in tells you he was not the last. Wine, women and song still rank high on the list of priorities of many people today. Many people are still working just for the weekend. Just like Solomon, they are looking for something to fill the emptiness within. These people fill their lives with every pleasure and excitement they can experience. Every Monday morning they get up to go to work, and are just as empty as they were the Monday before.

Solomon would not be surprised; he found the same to be true in his life. Worldly pleasures can satisfy for a moment, but they quickly lose their edge. The thrills have to become riskier, and the drinks have to become stronger. There is no longer any meaning in physical intimacy, to be exciting it has to become kinkier. Solomon had many wives, and was not satisfied. He had a harem, he could try anything and do anything he wanted, and he did. None of it satisfied. He could afford to buy the fastest horses, and the best available toys, yet nothing satisfied. He hired and bought the greatest entertainers and singers and soon found them boring. It was all meaningless.

Some are foolish enough to believe Solomon’s truth is no longer true. After all, we live in the modern age. The possible forms of entertainment seem to be almost endless. We would need many lifetimes just to watch the movies that Hollywood has turned out in the last 100 years. Technology has changed, but human nature has not. Even today with all of our modern marvels, entertainment and pleasure cannot fill the emptiness within. There is no drug strong enough, no thrill big enough and no pleasure pleasant enough to fill the emptiness within. That emptiness is a God shaped hole, and only God can fill.