22So I saw that there is nothing better for a man than to enjoy his work, because that is his lot. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?
There have been several books published lately that give an account of someone who has gone to heaven and returned. I am not here to dispute what those people experienced. The author of our text is struggling with finding the meaning of life. He is expounding that everything here on this earth is “meaningless,” to use his word. Every activity in this life that is connected to only this life cannot have meaning. Meaning comes as something is connected to something permanent, not something temporary. My father was in the Navy in WWII. His father made a code to allow him to communicate his location without the enemy knowing. If you looked at the code you would have great difficulty understanding why anyone would do that. We live in a time of instant communication. We don’t have censors looking at all the mail written by the military and blacking out those portions that are deemed sensitive. Because the nature of this life is one of constant change, meaning changes over time. The word “gay” used to mean happy and fun-loving, but it has come to mean something very different in our contemporary culture. If we are going to find meaning in life, the author is arguing, then we must find it in connection to something permanent. And for someone who is eventually going to die, they can’t see where they are going after death before they get there. There are no sneak previews of our eternity. So if all we have is our work, then we had better enjoy it. If we have the assurance of eternity with the LORD, then we can endure some pretty terrible things temporarily, because we have heaven waiting.
The Arnold Journey 