Are You Chasing After the Wind?

We want our lives to mean something. We want to look back on our lives and feel proud of our accomplishments. We want to leave our mark in the world.

We want to be somebody, so we set out on a mission to become somebody.

In our society, accomplishments count for so much. Knowledge counts for so much. Appearance counts for so much. Wealth counts so much. Popularity counts so much. By the world’s standards, these things are tied directly to our worth.

We chase after them.

We don’t want people to think we’re uncool, dumb, ugly, or not enough, so we scramble for every resource possible to make us feel like our life has meaning. We tally up points in our mind of things we’ve accomplished or people we’ve impressed because it makes us feel valuable – like somebody.

We scramble for approval. We scramble for praise. We scramble for reputation.

Why?

Why do we try so hard to be known by the world when we already have a God who knows us?

“For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

He knows your heart.

When we chase after what the world calls worthy, we are handing man the power to evaluate our worth.

Let’s renew our minds and stop valuing what God doesn’t consider valuable. Let’s stop focusing on ourselves and align our focus with how God sees us. God doesn’t love you because of your appearance, accomplishments, knowledge, or wisdom; He loves you because He loves you, and that is enough.

We risk missing what God has for us when we’re so busy looking for meaning in everything other than Him.

We want to live this life full of meaning but we tend to look in all the wrong places. He frees us from our search for meaning because our identity is rooted in Him.

Solomon reflects on his own life throughout Ecclesiastes, and he comes to the conclusion that his achievements and status were all meaningless: “Yet when I surveyed all that my hand has done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 2:11)

He describes his life as “a chasing after the wind.”

The thing is, we are all going to die. In an instant, our achievements, our popularity, and our wisdom will disappear. One day, we’ll look back at our own lives like Solomon did.

When that day comes, what will you see in your reflection? What did you spend your life pursuing? Where did you spend your time? How did you use your energy? What was your motivation?

So, if you are scrambling to prove your worth, then perhaps you are chasing after the wind. But you were made to chase Him because your worth is found far beyond this world.  

Our search for meaning will lead us nowhere, but our search for God will lead us to meaning.

Chase after Him.