{"id":608,"date":"2019-04-16T19:12:49","date_gmt":"2019-04-16T23:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/?p=608"},"modified":"2019-04-16T19:12:50","modified_gmt":"2019-04-16T23:12:50","slug":"the-grace-of-being-lost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/the-grace-of-being-lost\/","title":{"rendered":"The Grace of Being Lost"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThese are the words of the Teacher, King David\u2019s son, who ruled in\nJerusalem.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything Is Meaningless<\/em><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

 \u201cEverything is\nmeaningless,\u201d says the Teacher, \u201ccompletely meaningless!\u201d<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do\npeople get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and\ngenerations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets,\nthen hurries around to rise again. The wind blows south, and then turns north.\nAround and around it goes, blowing in circles.<\/em> Rivers run into the sea, but the sea is\nnever full. Then the water returns again to the rivers and flows out again to\nthe sea. Everything is wearisome beyond\ndescription. No matter how much we see, we are never satisfied. No matter how\nmuch we hear, we are not content.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

History\nmerely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is\ntruly new. Sometimes people say, \u201cHere is something new!\u201d But actually it is\nold; nothing is ever truly new. We don\u2019t remember what happened in the past,\nand in future generations, no one will remember what we are doing now.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Teacher Speaks: The Futility of Wisdom<\/em><\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I, the Teacher, was king of Israel, and I lived in Jerusalem. I\ndevoted myself to search for understanding and to explore by wisdom everything\nbeing done under heaven. I soon discovered that God has dealt a tragic\nexistence to the human race. I observed everything going on under the sun, and\nreally, it is all meaningless\u2014like chasing the wind.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is wrong cannot be\nmade right.<\/em>
\n    What\nis missing cannot be recovered.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said to myself, \u201cLook, I am wiser than any of the kings who\nruled in Jerusalem before me. I have greater wisdom and knowledge than any of\nthem.\u201d So I set out to learn everything from wisdom to madness and folly. But I\nlearned firsthand that pursuing all this is like chasing the wind.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The greater my wisdom,\nthe greater my grief.<\/em>
\n    To\nincrease knowledge only increases sorrow<\/em>.\u201d (Ecclesiastes 1 NLT)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This world is full of ideas on what purpose we serve. We are often\ntimes pressured from birth to death to fulfill a certain role or purpose in\nsociety. These expectations may or may not help us discover our sense of self.\nYet when we fail or succeed to meet the expectations of those around us and\nthat of our own, we discover that we only feel the same way as King Solomon\ndid. We think: \u201cwhat\u2019s the point?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I wonder, is there some blessing in allowing ourselves to acknowledge\nthat sometimes we get lost?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it\u2019s okay to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our purpose isn\u2019t found in the way people perceive us, or the\nstandards we set up for ourselves. Having goals and hopes for the future is\nimportant, but there\u2019s something even more important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through Micah, God teaches us: \u201cHe has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require\nof you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your\nGod?\u201d (Micah 6:8 ESV).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And 1 Corinthians 13 shows us the most\nexcellent way; summed up in one word in how we should live our lives with a\nsingular purpose: love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love is so difficult. It would be severely understating it when I say\nthat we aren\u2019t consistent in loving others and ourselves. How much more when it\ncomes to loving our Lord?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But through Him, we receive grace. When we are lost to ourselves and\nthe world, God pours more grace into us. And that is the grace of being lost.\nNot because of what we have done in the past or what potential we will fulfill\nin the future, but simply because of who He is (Romans 5).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s grace of being lost in God\u2019s love. Once we allow ourselves to\ngive up our identities to Him, we discover and become who we are meant to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThese are the words of the Teacher, King David\u2019s son, who ruled in Jerusalem. Everything Is Meaningless  \u201cEverything is meaningless,\u201d says the Teacher, \u201ccompletely meaningless!\u201d What do people get for all their hard work under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth never changes. The sun rises and the sun sets, then hurries … Continue reading The Grace of Being Lost<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":609,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608\/revisions\/609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nyhanmaum.org\/EM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}