Vanity and Chasing After Wind
Why am I writing this blog? Do I actually hope it will change any lives? No, not really. I suspect that fewer than one hundred people will ever read this sentence, and of those who make it this far even fewer will read to the end. Even if people did read this blog post to its conclusion, whatever point I will make here will be forgotten within a few hours. If I’m being honest, I don’t even remember all of the points I’ve made in my own blog posts. Even if this post happens to be particularly meaningful for one person or another, it's importance will fade in time. Those who care will forget before the next blog post lands. Those who don’t care will forget before they finish reading, if they even get that far. So why go through the trouble of writing, editing, posting, and sharing this blog post? What good will it do for me? What good will it do for the world?
Of course, this isn’t just a question for the blog. This is a question for most of the work we do. This is especially true of hobby work, but it is also true to work we get paid for. Many will say that the reason they work is so that they can pay their bills and put food on the table. That is certainly an understandable reason to work, but is the fear of starvation and homelessness really a good motivator? If the only reason we work is so that we have a home and food, why not be slaves? I can’t speak for everyone, but I suspect that many would agree with me if they thought about it deeply. We need more reason to work than simply because we are hungry. We need to feel like what we are doing is meaningful.
This is perhaps easy for my dad who works for a power plant that keeps people warm during the winter, cool during the summer, and provides all the comforts and necessities, in some cases, of life. Certainly farmers feel similarly. If they don’t do their work, there are people who aren’t getting food when they need it. However, my first real job was in the outbound call center at Omaha Steaks. We called past customers and offered them great deals on our products and tried to upsell as much as possible. While it does have to do with getting food to people, this isn’t exactly equivalent to the work of a farmer. The people we were calling had access to food. If you can afford Omaha Steaks, you can afford food at your local grocery store. We weren’t helping starving people. We were offering middle class and wealthy people great deals on gourmet food products that they could have just as easily ordered online or by calling in themselves. What exactly were we doing? What good service did we provide for the world?
With regard to this blog, I see this as part of my service to this church. My understanding is that the more content a small organization can put out on social media, the more reach they will have. If the blog is posted weekly on our website and our Facebook page, we have more chances for people to share it and at least see our website name moving around on our local social media circles. Writing this blog is essentially making weekly advertisements for the church, with the hopes that mere exposure to content will turn attention to us and bring more people in. And I think we can all agree that a church having more people is good for the church.
But if this is just an advertisement, why do I make sure to write over a thousand words a week? Why not a two hundred word blurb that people can just click and share around so I can save myself some time? Perhaps as the writer of Ecclesiastes writes, this is all simply vanity and a chasing after wind. Maybe I write this to inflate my own ego. Perhaps I want to claim that I put a lot of time and intellectual labor into my work for this church, essentially writing an extra short sermon every week and posting it to the blog. I want to further develop my writing skills, so I use this blog to practice. I want to distract myself from other stresses and retreat into the comfort of something I believe I can do well (i.e. writing), so I write a thousand words a week to feel a sense of accomplishment even when I’m having a rough time. One could argue that I write this blog to maintain my own mental and emotional well being in the face of an extremely busy and stressful world.
While I’m sure it could be argued that much of the work, especially hobby work, we do is simply for the sake of our own mental health, I think there is more to it than that. Again, the author of Ecclesiasties looks at all the work of mankind and sees it as vanity because eventually you will die and your projects will do you no good then. You won’t take your wealth with you. Other people will be left behind to do what they will with all your work. They may carry it on in ways you would be proud of, or they may foolishly misuse it and squander the gifts you’ve left behind. In the end, all of your work seems to count for nothing because we all die, and this is a reality that we need to face and wrestle with. However, I don’t think it is the final thing to be said about our work.
God is eternal, and God is also a master weaver of stories. God knows each of us by name, and loves each of us uniquely. We are not statistics or white noise to God. Each of us are important characters in the long unfolding saga of humanity. Each of us matters to God. Our stories, our pain and suffering, our joys and triumphs, and our work are all held in God’s memory. This is true of our important work that we get paid for, but it is also true of our hobbies. Every poem we lovingly craft for a friend, every story we write, every joke we make up, every act of kindness and generosity, every work we’ve done in secret, shared with friends, or shown for all the world to see, though forgotten by those around us and even by us, is remembered by God. If there is any encouragement that this blog provides to anyone, though they will surely forget the words that stirred them, God will not.
Perhaps much of the work we do is in vain, or at least appears so from a human frame of reference. Perhaps there really isn’t much reason to toil and work hard. Being stressed and anxious benefits us nothing. Everything we do will be forgotten by everyone around us and even by ourselves. Maybe I’m writing this for my own self-aggrandizement.
But I believe that God will see this. God will remember our works and our toil. I don’t think this does anything for our salvation or for our quality of life beyond this world, but I do want God to know that amid all the confusion and mistakes, I’ve been trying to do something worthwhile. Even if I don’t see the value and worthiness of my work, it is my hope held in faith that God sees. God knows. God cares. God remembers our work and weaves it into the story of time, so that it is not all done in vain.
