A dog and bubbles make a very amusing combination. I think my wife discovered this first when our little Shih Tzu dog was just a puppy, a new member of our family, the only one with four legs, and she was still discovering her world. My wife went out and got one of those containers of bubble lotion - you know, with the little wand that you could blow bubbles out of. We used them when we were kids. Missy cannot resist those bubbles. She'll kind of pounce there on the floor on a bubble as soon as it lands, and she attacks that thing. Of course, when there are some in the air, she is watching them come down. She's in an attack mode. The problem is that the bubbles disappear as soon as she gets to them. She starts to attack it or to put it into her mouth. It's gone - leaving this bewildered dog sniffing and searching, and she's looking up into the air at the rest of the bubbles coming down. She wastes an awful lot of energy looking for them.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Chasing Bubbles."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Ecclesiastes 1:14 from a man who chased plenty of them. King Solomon, the ancient Jewish King, said this, "I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind." We might say "the bubbles."
See, Solomon probably lived life with more gusto than anybody you ever knew. He was the richest man of his time. He built an incredible temple with his name on it. Roads and buildings everywhere that he was responsible for. He had the best of entertainment. He had more women than you could possibly imagine, and he studied the greatest ideas of his time, and repeatedly he would say in this book, "It was all chasing after the wind."
Chasing bubbles - maybe you know the feeling. You see something or someone that looks promising as a goal and it would give you personal happiness or personal fulfillment, right? And you pounce on it with everything you got, and - puff - its gone. It leaves you sniffing and wondering why you're still empty looking for the next bubble to come along. How long is it going to be before we realize that what we really want isn't any of life's bubbles, any of the things that earth has to offer?
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, Solomon reached the conclusion. He said, "God has placed eternity in our hearts." There is an eternal hole in our heart. It's so big only someone as eternal as God can fill it. We've been trying to get earth stuff and earth people to fill a God hole in our heart. We're hungry for something eternal.
Right now you might be aggressively pursuing a position or a possession or a person with everything you've got. But when you get it, you will discover what you always discover - it's a bubble that bursts. That is why Solomon concludes after his life search in Ecclesiastes 12:1, "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth."
There's only one pursuit worth everything you got - a personal relationship with your Creator. Life lived for what matters to Him. The Bible says, speaking of Jesus Christ, "He is our peace."
Maybe you're away from God right now and you know you are. The Bible says we all are - because of our sin, our self rule of our life. But Jesus came to pay for that on His cross. He took that death penalty, and when you meet Jesus at His cross, you are finally, as the Bible says, "complete in Him."
How soon are you going to give up chasing the wind? The bubbles? Looking for love and peace in life in things that disappear as soon as you got them? It's time for you to belong to Jesus. Remember, you might finally be ready for something eternal, unloseable, unbreakable. You're ready for Jesus Christ.