Several years ago (and many less children) my wife and I began to embark on the daunting task of family discipleship. Can I be honest…? We had no clue what we were doing. (And to some degree…we still don’t.) But we felt the need to try something. One evening around the supper table as I was waxing eloquently (insert sarcasm) about some passage of Scripture to my then two-year old…she looked at me intently and with the utmost seriousness said, “daddy I have to tell you something.”

When I was seven years old there was one thing and one thing only that I wanted for Christmas: Hungry Hungry Hippos.  The reason I know this to be true with such clarity is because I have watched the family camcorder footage where I am seen opening the present and exclaiming with overwhelming jubilience… “I wanted this all day and all night.”  I must have said that phrase no less than 10 times, a memory that my family finds quite comical.

Recently, on a trip to the beach our minivan popped a tire. I may or may not have run over something sharp…but that’s besides the point. After changing the tire and enjoying a nice afternoon on the beach we headed the hour and half back to our home. Our trip took us along a one lane road (i.e. no passing) and of course with a spare tire strapped on we were severely limited in our speed.

As Solomon reaches his concluding thoughts in the book of Ecclesiastes - he makes an interesting exhortation to his reader: enjoy life.  It’s a hard concept to grasp in light of Solomon’s previous outlook.  How can you enjoy life if it’s meaningless and all vanity?  Is enjoyment even possible?  And if it is… how does one actually go about doing that?