Solomon really had it all. He fed his senses with everything a man could want and yet his soul was increasingly starved as he gave himself to the pursuit of pleasure. The pursuit of pleasure is something of a preoccupation of our culture. We have what we need, so we amass things that we think will give us more and more pleasure. And the more entertained we are the more bored we get and the emptier we feel. The average Australian lives far more comfortably than kings of the ancient world and we have pleasures available to us that Solomon himself could never have dreamed of. All this can serve as an effective distraction, a painkiller, for a deep emptiness that lies in the human heart. There is nothing wrong with pleasure. God created the world with lots of pleasures for us to delight in. But these pleasures were intended to perform a role within our relationship with God. They were intended to be enjoyed as part of our enjoyment of God. When you take God out of the picture and take only the pleasures of life, it is like taking all the nutrition out of a food. Pleasure without God leaves us full but still malnourished. There are many things to enjoy in life but without God they become painkillers to which we easily become addicted. With God the pleasures of life become gifts that remind us of God’s goodness.
Thank God for the good things he has given you to enjoy.
Read Ecclesiastes 2:1-11
