The Real Meaning of Life

I’m not the dumbest man in the world, but I hope he doesn’t die. All kidding aside, I’m not a very smart man. I’ve never enjoyed literature, or reading, or contemplating what I’m reading. I was terrible in English in school, terrible in literature class, terrible even in Government class, not that I didn’t understand the mechanics of government, but when it came to analyzing social impacts and foreign policy, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. It was mostly because I didn’t care…all I cared about was wanting to be a fireman, and once I became a fireman, all I thought about was eat, sleep, fight fire, repeat.

That said, I have difficulty understanding a lot of the Bible, especially when it comes to the prophets. Much of the prophesy is symbolic, and while theologians can guess what it means, I don’t believe anyone knows for a fact. For example in this chapter, what is the “Valley of Vision”? Scripture doesn’t say. And at first I couldn’t figure out the “House of Forests”, but then I vaguely remembers all of the rooms and buildings Solomon built in his temple. Here’s what I can say.

Read your Bible, then read it again. And again. And again.

This is my sixth read, and I still can’t grasp what Isaiah is saying here, but what I can say is that because I’ve read the Bible before, I know the purpose of what he is saying, and that the day is coming when Israel will be invaded, all of the sacred gold and silver will be stolen, and the majority of the people will be taken captive for a lifetime.

And once again, scripture makes it sound as though it is a punishment inflicted by God, but I choose to believe it is a warning. A thought that just popped into my head; we have the luxury of reading the Holy Bible and reading about the events that have occurred; Isaiah didn’t. All Isaiah had was the Torah, and everything else was just a reaction to what he saw, heard, and felt. It may very well seemed to Isaiah that what God was speaking to him was impending punishment, when actually our loving and merciful God was just trying to warn the people of the consequences of their own actions.

I remember as a teen when I drifted away from church and started drinking at a young age (our town had a big problem with alcohol), my parents had an intervention. They didn’t want to see me drinking alcohol. They told me that if my behavior continued, I would become an alcoholic. I would have an alcohol related accident and be severely injured or killed, or worse, kill someone else. They even say that I could end up in prison because of an alcohol related incident.

My parents were telling me what was going to happen, they were warning me that if I continued my behavior, these things were possible. I have no doubt that if the people of Israel had heeded God’s warnings and turned back to Him, He would have protected them from the coming invasion.

But the reason the invasion occurred, sorry to spoil the ending, is because the people didn’t heed the warnings. They had drifted far away from God, eerily similar to our society today, and despite the warnings, they were set in their earthly ways. And I hate to spoil the ending, but yes, the invasion comes.

But I wouldn’t understand that if I had read the Bible before, had studied the Bible.

God is giving us warnings today. We have separated ourselves from Him, and we are reaping what we’ve sowed. Every day there are murders, rapes, broken families, natural disasters, all because we’ve turned away from God and His protection. Remember, when God created the earth, it was perfect. It was very likely an even temperature around the globe, no excessive heat at the Equator, no polar ice caps to the ends of the poles. There were no hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes. In fact, there wasn’t even a rainy day, as scripture tells us the a “mist came up out of the ground” and kept everything watered. Now, we have violent thunderstorms, devastating hurricanes, and deadly tornadoes, all because sin was introduced into the world. And by simply looking at the weather events only that are occurring today, you should easily know it is because we’ve separated ourselves from God.

Heed God’s warnings. Turn back to Him now while you still can. Develop a relationship with Him, love Him. You should have a love for your Heavenly Father that exceeded the love you had for your earthly father.