DISNEYLAND
When I was a college kid in the San Francisco Bay Area, I would drive down with my friends to Disneyland at least once a year. We would leave late Friday night and take turns driving and sleeping during the eight hour drive. We would arrive in town early, have breakfast at Denny's and be at the gate at 8:00 A.M., just as Disneyland opened.
We would be so excited and once we were through the gate we would run to our favorite ride, maybe Space Mountain or Pirates of the Caribbean, but we ran like our lives depended on it. Then, we ran from ride to ride until the late night closing, spent the night in a cheap motel, and then we would be at the gates Sunday morning just as Disneyland opened once again. (Yes, we would skip church that day) Again we would run to our favorite ride first and then run from ride to ride all day...and then about 4:00 P.M. it would kick in, Eccl. 1:9 "What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again."
The Pirates or the Caribbean weren't pirates anymore, they were animatronics mannequins. The Swiss Family Robinson Tree House wasn't a fantastic tree fort; it was just a cement tree. Space Mountain wasn't a scary rocket ship anymore, for we saw the tracks the cars ran on and it was just a rollercoaster in the dark. Oh, and It's A Small World-–we couldn't go near that relentless song; it became merciless upon our ears. What was so exciting just a few hours before had become dull; what initially had given us great joy now lacked any meaning.
We see the meaning in our lives slipping away at times, even things we look forward to can become meaningless. Here in our Scripture this morning, we are told everything we do is, ultimately, meaningless. It is very nihilistic in thought, isn't it? Now, I've said this many times before: The Bible is a very practical book. So what we have here in this Scripture is not impractical thought. Most certainly we have here is very helpful and very practical, for you know, nihilism is not practical.