Jack Just finished reading Ecclesiastes and checked his in box. Really. He did not know that a Big box store was into the Prophet of extensional thought. It caught Jack’s attention for certain. An advertisement as wisdom perhaps? There is no money involved in being vain. A homonym pun for Jack’s mind.

I have a new friend in our neighborhood. We swim together a few times a week at the pool about 20 miles away. He has been taking lessons on swimming and has a whole kit bag of cool accessories for serious swimmers..Special flippers, hand paddles, snorkel. Stuff like that.

I asked him once in the locker room what he thinks will happen when we die. “Worm Food” was his answer. The sort of answer of Camus, Sartre or Nietzsche. The sum of the reviewers in a book, ‘The Terror of Existence’ was “every endeavor, be it good bad or indifferent, will one day become undone, as death ends at the grave.”

Jack cannot fathom why this intelligent and caring man would exercise so well and diligently, only to believe it all comes to naught. All is Vanity says the preacher.. Perhaps to enjoy the response of his body and to prolong the inevitable death? {The usual unpleasant experience that we all must do).

There is nothing new under the sun and we whirl about our little solar system in the unfashionable western spiral arm of the Milky Way, It will all wind down to dust, stardust as it is said. Nothing new under the sun as the rivers flow into the ocean and it never gets full.

A walk in the graveyard with all the old weathered gravestones that once were placed there by a grieving family. Now forgotten as the once fancy pillar of stone becomes covered with patches of moss. The so called eternal stone deteriorating and indeed, becoming building materiel for the ambitious small creatures with a much shorter life spans than.ours are. Vanity, all is vanity.

No standards of life, no real solid instructions on what to focus on and how to actually live as we all know we should. A moral life is some how attractive to some of us and why does this happen? Who beyond our small view of life can we rely on to show us a way out and a way to live that has meaning, eternal meaning? Only one man ever claimed and demonstrated that there is life beyond the grave. You cannot weigh or measure love, beauty or devotion. There is no end to something you cannot measure. How can this be?

He can do those things and bring them to us when we die. There is only one who can and does create eternal beauty. A man that conquered death and offers eternity with him. It is the only thing that is not vain. Chase and look for Him. He is everywhere and also with You as you read this short column. True life that is not vanity. It has and will belong to of the giver of life. As the wonderful song says it so well: “I can only imagine what it will be like. Will I sing hallelujah, will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine” a. All life, all of us, all that will be and every thing that was. It’s Jesus. It’s pretty good.

Jack Gator

a. Mercy me