The Search for Significance
Dr. Brent Strawsburg / Ecclesiastes 3:11-15
“This is the way the world ends
This is the way the word ends
This is the way the word ends
Not with a bang but a whimper”
T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men
1ST KEY…
MEANINGLESS! MEANINGLESS!
“VANITY OF VANITIES”
2ND KEY…
“UNDER THE SUN”
ETERNAL INSIGHT #1
GOD’S SOVEREIGN PURPOSE
IS BEHIND EVERYTHING
“Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experience that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that everything I have learned in my 75 years in this world, everything that has truly enhanced and enlightened my existence, has been through affliction and not through happiness, whether pursued or attained…. This, of course, is what the Cross signifies. And it is the Cross, more than anything else, that has called me inexorably to Christ.” Malcolm Muggeridge
ETERNAL INSIGHT #2
GOD HAS STAMPED ETERNITY
WITHIN OUR LIVES
“Nietzsche said a man can undergo torture if he knows the why of his life…But I, here at Dachau, learned something far greater. I learned to know the Who of my life. He was enough to sustain me then, and is enough to sustain me still.”
-Christian Reger, Dachau Concentration Camp Survivor
ETERNAL INSIGHT #3
GOD PROVIDES DIVINE MOMENTS
FOR US TO KNOW HE IS AWESOME
ETERNAL INSIGHT #4
GOD REPEATS THINGS UNTIL WE LEARN THE LESSON
“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals and the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in….” C.S. Lewis”