There is one birthday card I have received over the years that has always stayed with me.  Sometimes, when someone else has a birthday and I don’t have a card to send them, I will make up a card like the one I remember because it is short and simple.  I just fold a piece of paper into fourths and on the front of the resulting "card" simply write: "Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday to you."  Then you open the card and it says, "It’s always about you."

Birthdays are a time when we mark the passage of our measure of years upon the earth.  We may not know how many we have left, but we know how many we have already had.  It is kind of thought-provoking when you get to be around 40 or so because, actuarially speaking, you are halfway through.  It changes one’s orientation.  We begin to realize that we are not going to live forever.  We are not going to get any younger.  We are not going to be able to do everything there is to do.  We are already beginning to slow down.  We are going to have to pick and choose and prioritize.

We also wonder more about the meaning of life.  What does it mean to be born and live and die?  Why was I created in the first place?  What is my purpose?  If we do not struggle with those questions, we may not make the right choices when faced with life’s decisions about marriage, children, livelihoods, relocations and so forth.  We may waste our limited number of days upon the earth.  We may never fulfill our purpose in living.  We may live meaningless lives.

The title of our message is "The Me in Meaningless."  Today we are going to find that life is meaningless to the extent that it is always about me—that it is always about you.  We may get all the things and experiences we want, and we may self-indulgently feed our carnal appetites to the max, but that will never satisfy our yearning to find meaning and purpose for our lives.  For some reason the creator created us with that yearning, and the secret of true and lasting satisfaction is satisfying it.

Today we are learning from the voice of experience—the voice of one person’s experience with meaninglessness.  Our text is from a book of the Bible that was given to us so that we could learn from somebody else’s mistakes.  It begins: The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem (Verse 1).  Solomon was the son of David who succeeded his father as king in Jerusalem.  Let us listen to the theme of his teaching as found in his opening words: "Meaningless!  Meaningless!" says the Teacher.  "Utterly meaningless!  Everything is meaningless" (Verse 2).  And it just sort of goes downhill from there.

Solomon wrote those words at the end of a very eventful life.  His reign began while he was still a child.  Recognizing his need for wisdom, he prayed to God for a discerning heart.  The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.  So God said to him, "Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked.  I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.  Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for--both riches and honor--so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. (I Kings 3:10-13).

God was so pleased that young King Solomon’s request was not self-serving that the former not only gave the latter the discerning heart he needed to serve others, he threw in riches and honor for Solomon.  Indeed, God made Solomon the richest and most honored man in the world at that time.  And here one has to question God’s parenting skills, because that is exactly how a young child like Solomon becomes spoiled.  And so it happened that Solomon became a spoiled king who wanted to have his way more than God’s.

For example, God specifically instructed the Israelites to stay clear from taking foreign women as wives who would lead them astray to worship other gods.  But when Pharaoh’s exotic daughter (also known as the Queen of Sheba) came visiting, Solomon was smitten—which turned out to be the first in a long line of forbidden relationships.  King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites.  They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, "You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods" (I Kings 11:1-2).

Have you ever known someone who was so consistently wise and discerning when it came to other people’s lives, but who had a real blind spot when it came to their own life?  Solomon was one of those people.  He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray.  As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been (I Kings 11:3-4).

What was he thinking?  No wonder he became so jaded about women by the end of his life.  Oh, you did not know Solomon became jaded by this experience?  How about this quote from his book of Ecclesiastes: I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all (7:28).  Seven hundred wives, three hundred concubines and not one upright woman among them all.  I’d say we have a pretty jaded fellow here.

Imagine supporting one thousand women.  But Solomon was able to do it because he was the richest man in the world—the Bill Gates of his day.  But how meaningful could all that wealth be for a fellow who wrote: Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.  This too is meaningless. …I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner (5:10 & 13).

So Solomon applied himself to learning.  Perhaps he could become smart enough and wise enough to figure out the meaning and purpose for his life.  He writes: I devoted myself to study and to explore by wisdom all that is done under heaven.  What a heavy burden God has laid on men!  I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind (1:13-14).  Indeed, he concludes, For with much wisdom comes much sorrow, the more knowledge, the more grief (1:18).  Wisdom and knowledge minus meaning and purpose equals sorrow and grief.

Solomon figured maybe he was trying too hard.  Maybe he should lighten up, relax and indulge himself with pleasures of many kinds.  I thought in my heart, "Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good."  But that also proved to be meaningless. …I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure.  My heart took delight in all my work, and this was the reward for all my labor.  Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun (2:1 &10-11).

Wine, women, money, knowledge, power and pleasure—everything proved meaningless in the end for Solomon.  Why?  Did you notice that all these things were for Solomon and not for anyone else?  These were all self-serving pursuits.  Solomon was a very self-serving man.  He was a very self-centered man.  He was not, as we have seen, a God-centered man.  Solomon could not get past "The Me in Meaningless."  Despite all the things he had and did for himself, he grew to be a thoroughly jaded man because he could never satisfy his yearning to find meaning and purpose for his life.

I must confess to a certain attraction I apparently share with many others for Paris Hilton--the heiress of the Hilton fortune, the A-list socialite, the "actress" (to use the term loosely), the model, the spoiled rich girl.  In my case it is not a physical attraction, although she is admittedly pretty.  It is that Paris, like Solomon, strikes me as someone who seemingly has everything in the superficial sense and yet nothing of real substance.  There is no meaning and purpose to her life.

It is a tragic life being played out for all to see, kind of like that of her friend Britney Spears whose self-absorption makes her a much better partier than a mother right now.  The intriguing question is: will Paris change in time unlike, say, Anna Nicole Smith?  And what would a truly transformed Paris look like?  Let us turn back the pages of history to another spoiled rich girl who was the Paris Hilton of her day and yet who found a way to overcome "The Me in Meaningless."

Marian Preminger was born in Hungary in 1913, raised in a castle with her aristocratic family, surrounded with maids, tutors, governesses, butlers, and chauffeurs.  Her grandmother, who lived with them, insisted that whenever they traveled, they take their own linen, for she believed it was beneath their dignity to sleep between sheets used by common people.  While attending school in Vienna, Marian met a handsome young Viennese doctor.  They fell in love, eloped, and married when she was only eighteen.

The marriage lasted only a year and she returned to Vienna to begin her life as an actress.  While auditioning for a play, she met the brilliant young German director, Otto Preminger.  They fell in love and soon married.  They went to America soon thereafter, where he began his career as a movie director.  Unfortunately Marian got caught up in the glamour, lights, and superficial excitement of Hollywood and soon began to live a sordid life.  When Preminger discovered it, he divorced her.

Marian returned to Europe to live the life of a socialite in Paris.  In 1948 she learned through the newspaper that Albert Schweitzer, a missionary doctor serving in Africa she had read about as a little girl, was making one of his periodic visits to Europe and was staying at Gunsbach.  She phoned his secretary and was given an appointment to see Dr. Schweitzer the next day.  When Marian arrived in Gunsbach she discovered he was in the village church playing the organ.  She listened and turned pages of music for him.  After a visit he invited her to have dinner at his house.

By the end of the day she knew she had discovered what she had been looking for all her life.  She was with him every day thereafter during his visit, and when he returned to Africa he invited her to come to Lambarene, Africa and work in the hospital he founded there.  Marian did--and found her true purpose in life.  There in Lambarene, the girl who was born in a castle and raised like a princess, who was accustomed to being waited on with all the luxuries of a spoiled life, became a servant.  She changed bandages, bathed babies, fed lepers—and discovered the meaning of life.

Marian wrote her autobiography and called it All I Ever Wanted Was Everything.  But everything did not satisfy her yearning for meaning and purpose until she could give everything.  When she died in 1979, the New York Times carried her obituary, which included this statement from her: "Albert Schweitzer said there are two classes of people in this world--the helpers, and the nonhelpers.  I'm a helper."  Marian had moved beyond "The Me in Meaningless."

If it worked for Marian Preminger it could work for Paris Hilton.  You have to admit that if Paris Hilton gave up her life of luxury for a life of service to others in need, it would make a pretty meaningful and memorable story.  How meaningful and memorable is the story of your life going to be when it is all said and done?  How purposeful will have been your measure of days upon the earth.  Will it all have been about you?  Or will you choose now to be God-centered rather than self-centered?