One day your ‘teen’ or ‘twenty’ reveals first to their friends and then to a parent: I’m ‘in a relationship,’ or I’m gay or I’m a vegan or I’m a witch or I’m quitting school or I’m pregnant or I’m getting an abortion or… or… any one of a number of things YOU as their parent had hoped they would not do.

“WHY,” you ask?

I don’t believe in God. I can do whatever I want. I am free. You can’t stop me. So what? Can’t I do whatever I like?

Yet the “Single Mom,” (a great lie in itself) is crushed that the grown child of her womb has said, ‘I can do what I want’, when she had hoped for better.

Is there no hope (for a ‘single mom’) who has defined the value of her life by what she has done for her children? Is that all there is?

—

A man comes home and his wife is sitting at the table drinking with friends… again. It seems her friends are her drinking friends, just as her family is her party and always having a ball.

“You have to move on,” she says. She was too drunk to even wonder, “Is that all there is?” She was escaped far enough to fantasize, “I’ll keep on dancing… and break out more booze.” And I’ll have a ball, if that’s all there is.

—

An important man, once held high in the eyes of men and of women and of his family… a man defined by his job, a man defined by his work, a man defined by what he does and how much money he makes – a man once well respected loses his job… and his importance.

The man mixed with the rich and socialized with the famous. He lived for his work… and then his work was gone and he asks: Is that all there is?

“Is that all there is,” he asks? “Who am I now?”

The words of another lyricist describe his defeat:

There’s a man just to her right
Black suit and a bright red tie
Too ashamed to tell his wife
He’s out of work, He’s buying time.

All those people going somewhere
Why have I never cared?
—

ALL in a search for meaning! ALL asking: “Is anybody out there? Does anybody care?”

ALL wondering, ‘What is the meaning of MY life?’

It’s a paradox of meaninglessness, isn’t it?

We ask, “What is the meaning of my life?”   Who are we asking?

And whose soul does touch our own that we would share in life’s meaning?

—

Meaning of our SELF must be defined in our relationships to OTHERS.

Meaning of our SOUL, so alone and so broken is already defined by the LORD God our creator. He IS a God of relationship. He IS the Son of Sacrifice. He IS the Spirit of personal relationship to an overflowing consecrated purpose of His immeasurable love for you.

A child defines their life by the latest discovery of their ‘friends.’ A mom defines her meaning by her children. A man defines his meaning by his work. And like the generations before, their child – a growing up child – searches for the same answers never found by their mother and by their father. They all ask the age-old question: Is that all there is?

And in an instant, one once rooted in scripture remembers:

All is vanity.

—

 Second of 3-part series: To be continued tomorrow