Inheritance

"I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether that person will be wise or foolish? Yet they will have control over all the fruit of my toil into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless." (Ecclesiastes 2:18-19)

We are a people addicted to debt. It is predicted that consumer debt (credit cards, stuff we buy) will rise 5% this year, and that's when it's already at an average of $7,400 (credit card debt alone) per household. That number is actually deceptive, because when you take out the households who don't have any such debt, the number rises. The average indebted household has $15,863 on their credit cards. Never mind mortgage or student debt. We are addicted to debt.

I've heard person after person who will say they have all this debt and no idea what they bought. The things that seemed so important at the time tend to wither away before the debt does. We think what we buy will make us happy, but it's never enough. And we have ended up with debt that is crippling and, for many people, will never be paid back.

This too is meaningless.

The Teacher realizes something as he ponders his work (toil) in this chapter: everything he works for will eventually be left to someone else. He cannot take any of it with him. And then he begins to worry that the person he leaves it to, the one who receives the inheritance, will be a fool. In the Bible, a "fool" has nothing to do with intelligence; it is the opposite of a wise person. Wisdom is knowing what to do with what you have, how to live a righteous life in the real world. Foolishness is the opposite; in this case, it would be squandering what the Teacher has spent his lifetime building.

So many of us spend so much energy and time investing in things that don't last, and we are rarely satisfied. I knew a man once who always wanted the latest of a particular vehicle, and as soon as he got that, he was looking at the next new one. Always restless, never satisfied. Meaningless, the Teacher says. Perhaps that's why the better Teacher, our Rabbi and Messiah, said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Jesus, in Matthew 6:19-21). In other words, "meaningless" is investing our whole lives in something that will not outlast us. Meaning comes when we invest ourselves first in eternal things, in those things that will last. A better inheritance to pass along is an inheritance of faith. This is where real meaning comes from.