A few weeks ago, my husband came home with a brand new Monopoly game announcing that we were going to play it during the Christmas holidays with our family.
One evening, we played a game with our granddaughter. While we were playing, I felt that I needed to explain to her the importance of her acquiring the most assets in order to win the game, but to be cautious and buy property wisely, so that she would not run out of money too quick.
Not long after we began to play, did I remember just how much life is like a monopoly game and like in the game, life also involves acquiring assets of property, navigating through the chance cards, paying bills, trying to avoid going to jail, and enjoy receiving a few perks along the way by getting free money and advancements while making strategic decisions to gain an advantage over the other players. And sometimes, experiencing unexpected setbacks, all while setting goals to accumulate more wealth as you and the other players strive to reach the top, by making calculated moves and managing their resources.
While the game itself is pretend and life is real, they both in the end, end up being put into a box for someone else to use the resources and assets that you had worked so hard to acquire. Often times, even though Monopoly is a game, in the end, it can leave you with a sense of disillusionment.
King Solomon with all his wisdom and wealth felt this same way and even wrote about it in the book of Ecclesiastes. He said that all he had acquired in life was vanity, and in the end of his life, he would leave all that he had worked for and acquired to others who had not worked for it themselves.
In Ecclesiastes 2:18-23, Solomon examines the destiny of his legacy and the intrinsic value of his hard work, and despairs because he will leave it all to those who will come after him and may possibly, eventually squander it. In the end-of-life Ecclesiastes 2:26 suggests that a life of gathering and accumulating can be a life of toil without a final purpose.
Life should not be expected to be all self-fulfilling, because life only has real meaning and purpose when it is lived in a right relationship with God, and for those who find it, finds the greatest of things!
Soloman expressed this sentiment in Ecclesiastes 1:2 that life under the sun is “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!” to convey a sense of disillusionment with the pursuits of life's wealth, pleasure, wisdom, and achievement for those who seek after life's vanities alone.
And in the end our bodies like the Monopoly game, are put into boxes, dropped in a hole cover with some dirt, while our friends and family return to the church and eat fried chicken and potato salad.
No doubt life will go on without us, and in the end, the only thing that we will take with us into the next life is our relationship to the Lord through our salvation, and how we lived in serving Him while we were here. May we all strive for a deeper relationship with God this new year, living for him while we build a better spiritual reward and work that will follow us when we leave this life!
Hold Fast,
-Bren
