Then I Understood What Profit Hath A Man?

Vanity of vanities… I have seen it, I have touched it, I have chased it and behold, it slipped through my hands like wind. What is a life? Is it not a breath that appears for a moment, then vanishes? I asked myself What is beauty? And wisdom answered: It fades. What is youth? A passing shadow. One day you are twelve, full of wonder and suddenly you are old, asking where the years went. Then I asked What have I done with my time? What have I truly built that death cannot take? For the things that once brought me joy why do they no longer satisfy me? The trophies I once chased why do they now gather dust in silence? Is this the reward of striving under the sun? To labor… to gain… to grow weary… and in the end, to leave it all behind? I looked again at the world and I saw a pattern. A child is born. He grows, he strives, he accomplishes… and then he dies. And I asked Does anything change? The earth still turns. The trees still stand. Summer still comes with its heat. Winter still answers with its cold. Autumn still falls. Spring still rises. So what then is man? I am nineteen, yet I have seen enough to ask: Is life without God anything but chasing the wind? What is a man who gains the world, yet stands empty before eternity? Then I understood Not by my wisdom, but by revelation: To live is Christ. Not ambition. Not applause. Not fleeting pleasure. And to die is gain. For what can death take from a man who has already given his life to God? So I ask you What are you building? What will remain when your breath is required of you? For as far as the east is from the west, so far has His love been set upon us not earned, not deserved, but given. Therefore I conclude: Fear God. Walk with Him. Know Him. For everything else is vanity.