17-6-2025 | Willemijn
What a title huh? I’m in a little bit of an existential crisis as you may guess. I feel like the writer of Ecclesiastes: I got wisdom but no hope. Some hope. Of course there is hope. There is hope in Jesus Christ. But apart from Him? What is the meaning of existing? What is the point of day day my day by day doing the same boring things, and even if you manage to accomplish some world-record-crazy shit like walking around the earth (yes, someone almost completed his walk around the earth!) or becoming the most famous man alive (like Elvis Presley - working his ass off for so many years, making 3 movies a year, doing shows, making records)? For what purpose?
When I was into new age spirituality (if you can call it that - I guess there were elements of that, but my belief system was a lot broader then that if I’m honest) I used to search for this meaning in the everyday, or in the great eternal cosmos. I used to gain so much knowledge, but again it’s the same point as the writer of Ecclesiastes: to what extent? What is the point? If all you are is a fleeting speck of dust in the great eternal streams of life? This is also Biblical: everything on the earth returns to dust. Everything is fleeting. I don’t understand why more people aren’t greatly miserable. Or maybe they are, but they are just not so aware of it, because the noise and busyness of daily life keeps them distracted of this not-to-fill void.
I know I sound exaggerated, why am I writing this? Well, that is because at this point I’m fasting of all kinds of content, and in this void of boredom, I’m more and more aware of this fact. This question: what’s the point? There’s nothing new under the sun. All the knowlegde will pass, and also those friendly little moments in between, those conversations, those moments you feel utterly loved, they’re also just that in some sense: moments. So what is the point?
Believe systems
If you ask an existentialist he will give you some answers that might satisfy you, but never completely. If your focus is limited to yourself, to people and to this earth, you will never be sure of anything, and anything you can be sure of, you can also be sure it dies when it’s time has come. If you ask a new ager/Hindu/Buddhist/spiritualist, he will probably talk to you about karma and the principles of not living only one life, but many, so your soul also won’t feel like it’s fleeting and will die within one life. Their hope is in the long term, the eternity of lessons, but never being there. Not now, not in this life at least. Also Muslims don’t know weather they will live with their God, or will be tortured in their graves for eternity. The only belief system that can give you assurance of this, is Christianity. Isn’t that crazy? The same book that reflects on the fleetingness of all the things on this earth, including souls, is also the book that gives us the solution: life in Jesus Christ.
Why? We’ll never know. But it’s there, in the Bible: ‘I will give them eternal life, so they will not perish’. If Jesus is God’s only Son, and He said this, it means we do have hope. “And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever,” it says in 1 John 2:17. The will of God is not just believing He’s there, but mostly inviting Jesus in your life, to take over your soul, so you will not perish, but have everlasting life. In Him, not from your own selfish desires. “Because whoever loses his life for My sake will find it”. It’s all so cryptic, isn’t it? Can you follow?
The Son
It’s actually pretty easy and makes sense: He is the one that is eternal, everything besides all that is in heaven, will flee, will pass, will perish. And that is ok, that is ultimately what creation is. It has a beginning and an end. But there is a longing in our soul. A longing to come home, a longing to be seen and to be heard, a longing to be love and to spread out that love. There is a longing to be merged back with our Creator, the Lord our God. And we couldn’t do this ourselves, so He did it for us. Now it’s up to us, with all the knowledge that we have gained and gotten through His book as well, to believe in Him. To actually believe that it’s all true what He’s telling us. And in this, if you really surrender to Jesus, there is no fear anymore to die. There is no fear, because we have reassurance in Him, through Him we are saved, not by ourselves or our own works, but in Him. And this is the joy of the Lord. This is all that we need to fill in that void, that total emptiness that we actually all feel deep inside. And it’s up to us: do we let Him in? Do we trust in His word? Are we ready to be surrendered to Him? In this there finally is total freedom, in knowing we have received eternal life. Not through anything in this world, not through knowledge that will pass by also. In this world, there is nothing new under the sun. But everything is new, when we accept and believe in the Son.
Amen!