"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." In Macbeth, Shakespeare paints a rather bleak picture of life-that of an act in which we pour our energies into a meaningless drama with no lasting significance. In short, life is of no substance.
While I am disinclined to think that we seek to live lives without substance, it seems that many of us allow far too much of that which is insubstantial displace the substantial. In laymen's terms, we fill our life with a lot of things that don't matter and end up having no room for the things that really matter. ...and we are surprised when our lives lack purpose and meaning!
I suppose that some would say we are just lazy creatures, doing what is easiest, but even the things that are not of lasting significance can take a herculean amount of effort. Take, for instance, the who's who of the high school years-I wasn't part of the popular "ruling" class, but I observed that a lot of effort went into belonging. You had to maintain your position, usually by putting outsiders down; you had to look the part, by wearing the right clothes and keeping up with the trends; and of course there was the constant pressure to act cool lest you be banished from the in-crowd. Sometimes the cool people even had to give up friendships or take part in activities they really didn't like, just to keep their position. The sad thing is that we can assume that all that high school coolness didn't follow them to college. At college, the process started over and then once again in the workplace or grad school. The effort never ends!
As the example above shows, we can put a lot of effort into things that mean a lot to us at the time but have no lasting significance. I think that perhaps the saddest part is that we are often so wrapped up in the insubstantial that it doesn't even bother us. C.S. Lewis probably says it best in "The Weight of Glory." "We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."
Lewis is writing about the glory which God offers us the opportunity in which to live even while we yet remain on this earth, but I think it can be applied to many things that are good but are not God's best for our lives. We are too easily satisfied and settle for a life in the shadow of the things which God has created for us.
We settle in our work: Perhaps taking a secure, high-paying job rather than a career we love. Others stay in middle management when they are more than qualified to run the company. Some work hard so they can play hard to forget about their work, others work so hard they never have time to play. ...and we wonder why we miss out on the "satisfaction in our toilsome labor" that is described in Ecclesiastes 5:18-20
We settle in love. Some forget who we are becoming in Christ and focus their attentions on someone who is far less than the person God is preparing for us. Some stay in a relationship with someone who hurts them and think they don't deserve better. Some cheapen love to the things that the world says it is. We make it about us, about our needs. Then we read the love described in the Song of Songs and wonder where we went wrong...
We settle in our faith. We seek a small God when it is convenient and ask Him to do small things (if we ask for His help at all). We don't have time to read the Bible and study the Word, yet we complain that we don't know God's will for our lives. We want God to work in our lives but we don't really want Him to test us or change us if it is going to be difficult or painful.
Unfortunately it is getting late so I will need to continue this later today!
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