Ecclesiastes 1:2-3

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun?

From Background Notes [BN] for January 11^th & 12^th written by Pastor Bob Brown:

“Caught in a loop.” “Catch-22.” “Revolving door.” “Stuck in a rut.” These are all common ways to describe the hopelessness of going nowhere while expending a great deal of energy. The Greeks told the story of a king named Sisyphus…

…a greedy and deceitful tyrant who regularly used his craftiness to maintain an iron rule over the city state Ephyra, now called Corinth. His cruelty to visitors and betrayal of the god Zeus led to banishment in the underworld, along with this punishment: to roll a large rock up a hill, only to have it roll down again. And so he spent eternity in useless effort and permanent frustration. Everything he did was pointless with no end in sight. Today, we often refer to such meaningless and unproductive work as “Sisyphean,” and studies of human labor reveal the obvious truth that there is a direct connection between the meaning of an activity and the level of motivation to do it. Existentialist writers like Camus and Kafka epitomized the ancient myth in their view of life which can become meaningless by being repetitive. [BN,1]

Join us this week in Study, Worship, Praise and Celebration at Chicago First Church of the Nazarene:

* Saturday 6:00pm
* Sunday 8:30am & 11:00am