Utterly vain

Is it not so that each of us has at some time done a certain thing and yet felt that it was utterly vain? It was like a blank lottery ticket and it strongly seems that it would have been better to use one’s time quite differently. Without belittling that feeling or an individual’s assessment of the situation, we cannot however be entirely sure whether a thread of life that seemed vain was truly utterly vain. It may well be that behind the frustration something special and good is hiding. But if God says that something is vain, we can be sure that it is vain. The apostle Peter writes in his letter of a vain manner of life saying: “…knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers…” A life that rolls from the womb to the grave without Jesus is like a blank lottery ticket. It would be quite staggering to wake up at the gates of eternity to the fact that a lifelong walk had been in vain.

James continues on the same theme and writes in his letter text before which everyone ought to flinch: “If any man thinketh himself to be religious, while he bridleth not his tongue but deceiveth his heart, this man’s religion is vain.” So James does not only remind us that the tongue is like a ship’s rudder that steers our life, but also joins an unruly tongue and vain religion together.

Surely there is always both a ditch and a puddle, and a person — according to the old saying — may go from the frying pan into the fire. While in the ditch they imagine that they need not order their life according to God’s will, and God classifies their walk as vain. Having ended up in the puddle, a person tries to perform everything rightly, forgetting that their fleshly strivings are nevertheless vain without divine influence. As the psalm writes: “Except Jehovah build the house, they labor in vain that build it: except Jehovah keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.”

Scripture:

Ps 127 1 Pet 1 James 1