Made for frivolities?

Made for frivolities?

(Charles Spurgeon, “The One Thing Needful”)

Were you made only to be a machine for digging holes, laying bricks, or cutting out pieces of wood? Were you created only to stand at a counter and measure or weigh out goods? Do you think your God made you for that and that only? 

Is this the chief end of man–to earn so many dollars a week, and try to make ends meet?

Is that all immortal men were made for?

As a man with a soul, capable of thought and judgment–and not a mere animal like a dog, nor a machine like a steam engine; can you stand up and look at yourself, and say, “I believe I am perfectly fulfilling my destiny”? 

God has made man that he may glorify him–and whatever else man accomplishes, if he attains not to this end, his life is a disastrous failure!

Others are lovers of pleasure. They are merry as the birds, their life is as the flight of a butterfly, which lightly floats from flower to flower, according to its own sweet will.

It cannot be that an immortal spirit was made for frivolities–spending all its time on the playthings of the world. 

So great a thing as an immortal soul could not have been made by God–with no higher object than to spend itself upon trifles as light as air.

Oh, pause a while, you careless, godless one! There is something more than the fool’s laugh. All things are not a comedy. Death and Heaven and Hell are serious–and should not life be? 

The charms of music, the merriment of the mirthful assembly, the beauties of art, and the delights of banqueting–there must be something more for you than these. Something more must be required of you than that you should waste your precious time from morn to night upon nothing but to please yourself!