Welcome to this daily PBGA devotional. Read Exodus 25, Ecclesiastes 1, and Luke 7 today. This devotional is about Ecclesiastes 1. These are the words of the teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem. Futility of futilities, says the teacher. Futility of futilities. Everything is futile. What does a man gain from all his labor, at which he toils under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. The sun rises, and the sun sets. It hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows southward, then turns northward, round and round it swirls, ever returning on its course. All the rivers flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place from which the streams come, there again they flow. All things are wearisome, more than one can describe. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing. What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. Is there a case where one can say, look, this is new? It has already existed in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of those who came before, and those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow after. I, the teacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I set my mind to seek and explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven. What a miserable task God has laid upon the sons of men to occupy them! I have seen all the things that are done under the sun, and have found them all to be futile, a pursuit of the wind. What is crooked cannot be straightened, and what is lacking cannot be counted. I said to myself, Behold, I have grown and increased in wisdom beyond all those before me who were over Jerusalem, and my mind has observed a wealth of wisdom and knowledge. So I set my mind to no wisdom and madness and folly. I learned that this, too, is a pursuit of the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, And as knowledge grows, grief increases. This is God's word. Like the earth revolves around the sun, your life revolves around something. The center of your life is what you think about day and night. It is the thing that gives you something to live for, the thing that provides you with direction when you have a decision to make. The center of your life is the thing that defines you. It is the word you would put in the blank of this sentence, I am a, and then the blank. What word comes to mind? Lots of people couldn't put a word they like into that blank. It might be because they don't really know what their center is, or possibly because they don't like the answer. Here's my question. What's your one thing? What's your center? What is the thing that guides you, that provides meaning for your life and helps you make decisions about your life? Answer this question, what is my center? If you have trouble answering that question, here are some questions that might help you. One, what do you spend your money on without worrying about the cost? Here's another. What would you miss the most if it were suddenly gone from your life? Here's another question. What would you avoid missing if you had a conflict in life? In other words, if you had to miss a meal or miss work, even if there were consequences to missing work, or you had to miss sleep in order to do something, What would that thing be that you would missleep, or work, or food, or whatever for? If you're having a hard time answering the question, what is my center? Then consider the choices you make in life. The center of your life is revealed by the choices you make in life. Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, had everything a man could want in life. Wealth? According to a webpage I read once, that is now gone, Solomon, at his peak net worth, was $2.2 trillion in today's money. That makes him the fifth wealthiest man in human history. Women? He had 1,000 women, 700 of them wives and 300 of them concubines. Career success. He was king of his country and faced no serious threats to his kingdom. And his kingdom expanded constantly during his reign, so I think he had some career success. What about smarts? Verse 16 says that he experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. Despite all these things, Solomon felt that his life was meaningless, according to verse 2. Verses 3 through 11 describe how completely lacking in permanence everything in life is. No matter how great you are, coming generations will barely think about you at all, as we saw in verse 11. We may think our lives are centered on pleasure, or achievement, or insight, or something else. But what really stands at the center of most people's lives is themselves. In other words, most of the time, we are self-centered. Self-centeredness is not the same as selfishness. Selfishness is seeking things for myself by keeping them from others. Self-centeredness means measuring things by me, by myself, rather than by some objective standard. A self-centered person does what is pleasurable, whether or not it is right or wrong. The morality of a thing is defined for that person by what that person wants, rather than some objective standard of morality. A self-centered person seeks to achieve not to benefit humanity, but to get credit for greatness from humanity. A self-centered person seeks insight in life for his own ego boost. the kind that comes from having more insight than anyone else. A self-centered person may be very generous to the poor or to other people. He may be kind and considerate. He may show an interest in other people. But the self-centered person does all these things for self-centered reasons. He is generous, kind, and considerate because he wants to be liked, or because he wants attention, or because he wants to manipulate other people into doing his will. Self-centeredness is not always easy to see in someone else, or even in ourselves. Many negative feelings rise from self-centeredness. Someone who is angry feels offended because he or she did not get what they felt they deserve. That's respect, admiration, love, or so on. The same is true often of those who have deep-seated bitterness. They're bitter about not getting what they thought or expected out of life. Fear or anxiety can come from realizing that the things someone has could be taken away or lost. That person is fearful because he cannot bear the thought of losing the things that he has. Depression can come from a lot of things, but one way it can come is from wanting something that you cannot obtain or that doesn't satisfy you when you do obtain it. The rest of this book of Ecclesiastes will chronicle Solomon's attempt to find a meaningful, satisfying, purposeful center for his life. Here's a spoiler, though. The only thing worth centering your life on is God. Did this devotional help you realize how self-centered you are? Did it help you see why you are disappointed, mad, bitter, fearful, or depressed? What would your life look like if it were truly centered on God? Not centered on God because it's the correct Christian answer to a question about centeredness, but what if God were truly, in your thoughts and actions, the center of your life? We'll look at more of this in future chapters of Ecclesiastes. But for today, the application is to repent and ask God to lift your self-centeredness, and then to ask him to teach you to focus your life on him. If you found this devotional helpful, go to my website, dailypbj.com slash subscribe, and enter your email address in the form there. Then every day from now on, you'll receive an email from me containing a link to the scripture readings that I announced at the beginning of these devotionals, so you can be reading the scripture every day, and then a link to the audio video and a transcript of these devotionals. And I do this to help you be in God's word every day. The daily email will cue you to read God's word and think about it each day. I'm looking for help with financial support. Please go to dailypbj.com slash support if you can help in this way and this will help me make this kind of content continue as well as more content to help you and others grow in their faith in Christ. Please share this devotional with someone who might be helped by it and I'll see you next time. May God bless you. I hope you have a great day today.