Monthly Devotional – July 2024

In 1986 when I was a young Mason, I attended the Grand Royal Arch Chapter’s annual Convocation with Keystone Chapter, where I roomed with Right Worshipful Robert Simpson of Charlottesville. After one evening session, I returned to the room where I found him reading the Book of Ecclesiastes. Immediately interested, I spoke with him long into the night about the Book and its important messages. Authored by our King Solomon, we use its twelfth chapter in the Master Mason Degree where we are reminded to remember our Creator while we are young, before the infirmities and pain of old age overwhelm us, when there is still time to enjoy life and be grateful for what we have. But this is only one of the many valuable Masonic lessons in the Book.

It begins with King Solomon proclaiming the famous words, “Meaningless! Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!” and speaks about the futility of toiling away day after day, how life is fleeting, it comes and then it goes, and “there is nothing new under the sun” which has not been done before. Even though Solomon was the wisest man who ever lived, he goes on to say that he had learned everything a person could learn, yet still felt unfulfilled. He went on to enjoy every pleasure in life, to undertake great projects, to amass great riches, to have many beautiful wives, and yet this was not enough. All of it was meaningless. He came to realize what we say at the Masonic funeral, “that life is uncertain and all earthly pursuits are vain”, and that whatever we acquire in this life cannot be taken into the next. He also saw what Job saw, “the righteous get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked get what the righteous deserve.” In contemporary language, we describe Solomon’s feeling of emptiness as a “God-shaped hole” in the human heart, which cannot be filled by the things of this world, a yearning in our soul that can only be filled by our Creator. And given all of this, what did Solomon conclude that we can use as Masons? “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the duty of all mankind”. Everything we do is important in the eyes of God. Only by service in the name of God, only by obeying His will, only by considering eternity in all your decisions can you find fulfillment, for life without God is meaningless and just a chasing after the wind. “Rejoice O young man in your youth!”

Please direct any comments or questions about this message to tvarner536@aol.com.

Thomas L. Varner Jr.
Grand Chaplain