Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

The Pursuit of Pleasure

Today we celebrate Graduation Sunday. It’s exciting for our grads to be at the end of a long and rigorous academic path-whether you’re graduating from high school or college or grad school or the FBI Academy. You’ve worked hard and you’ve earned your diploma.

And the good news is that you probably have more knowledge, more understanding, more wisdom than when you started.

The bad news is that according to Solomon in the Ecclesiastes, that wisdom is just empty, it’s vain, it’s hevel, it’s phht-a breath of vapor that disappears in the air.

In fact we saw last time in Ecclesiastes 1:18 that much wisdom is much grief. The more you know about life-the more you realize how empty it is. That is life, as Solomon would say, “under the sun” apart from God.

Now maybe you’re saying, “I should’ve known that. It seemed like the longer I was in school, the more miserable my life was.”

Personally I was in school for 21 of the first 25 years of my life. And it didn’t seem to get any more enjoyable. In fact sometimes the only thing that kept me going was the light at the end of the tunnel-the diploma, the graduation, the degree.

I remember when I finished college; I had this feeling of relief and euphoria.  Maybe that’s how some of you grads are right now.

You’re ready to get a job, get into the industry you’ve trained for. You’re ready to do what you’ve always wanted to do.

You’re thinking, “From now on life gets good. No more all-nighters studying for exams. No more cramped little dorm rooms shared with immature roommates. No more brain sweat and tears.

Now it’s time to enjoy life. Get a nice house. Excel at my new job. Enjoy my beautiful spouse.

Maybe you’re more than ready to trade in the pursuit of wisdom for the pursuit of pleasure.

In Ecclesiastes 1, we saw that pursuing wisdom apart from God is empty. In Ecclesiastes. 2, we’re going to examine the pursuit of pleasure.