Being a king usually means you have access to whatever you want.

If it exists.

I think about that sometimes when I read the words of the Preacher in Ecclesiastes:

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.
I did not withhold my heart from any pleasure.

(Ecclesiastes 2:10)

I have a toaster.

If I want—whenever I want—I can stick a slice of bread in there—a slice of bread baked from wheat grown on some farm I’ve never been to in a factory I’ll never see, loaded onto trucks that traveled countless miles to put that loaf for sale on the shelves of a store that I can walk into at literally any hour of the day to purchase nearly anything I can imagine—and I can heat that bread with the power of electricity that’s being generated in some distant plant and shunted into my house through a complex series of transformers and substations—and just like that, I have toast.

How many kings throughout history could do that?

How many kings throughout history had access to a hot shower? How many had access to a car that could cruise with the power of a couple hundred horses down a carefully engineered highway of concrete and asphalt? To a plane that could tear through the clouds and complete, in hours, a journey that once took entire months? How many could open their pantry to see it stocked full of spices sourced from countries around the world, which once required complicated trade routes and treaties to acquire but now can be delivered to your house by this afternoon?

How many kings could hold in their hands a tiny glowing rectangle capable of interacting with the sum total of human knowledge, powered by miniaturized technology that once would have seemed to be the darkest of magic, sending and receiving unfathomable amounts of data through the air itself at almost the speed of light, into and out of a mind-boggling worldwide network of radio towers and underwater cables?

How many could watch a single movie?

How many could open a streaming service and pick from thousands of movies, each made with a budget vastly outstripping the GDP of any nation-state in the ancient world?

I do not live the the life of a king—I live a life of constant financial stress, like many of you reading this do—and yet at the same time, I am drowning in a sea of luxuries that most kings throughout history would give their right arm to obtain.

I think if the book of Ecclesiastes was written today, parts of it would have sounded very different. After all, what did the Preacher know about having a good time? He didn’t even own a toaster.

From there it’s easy to convince ourselves that the message of the book would have somehow been different.

The Preacher was looking for fulfillment through pleasure, and every attempt ended in the same frustrated conclusion: “indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:11). But the Preacher didn’t have what we have! He couldn’t do what we can do! Maybe, just maybe, indulging in enough of our modern-day luxuries could at last bring us the fulfillment we’re chasing.

If we could just get the newest gadget, or a fancier house, or a better-paying job, or more friends, or more influential friends—

Is it really possible to be sad on a yacht?

But that’s the whole point. No, the Preacher didn’t have access to the extremes of our day, but they’re made of the same stuff as the extremes of his day:

“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity” (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

We can chase those pleasures as far as we want—up to and even beyond the boundaries of God’s law—and the end result will always be the same, no matter how incredible it promises to be.

We can’t find meaning in emptiness, and we can’t find fulfillment in vanity. And even when we invent new emptinesses and new vanities, they still follow the same rules.

The conclusion of the matter is still the same, too—even in the age of the toaster. “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all” (Ecclesiastes 12:13).

In pursuit of our Creator and of His way of life, even the vanities are filled with meaning. “You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).

When we make pleasure our goal, we’ll always come up empty—and yet when we make God our goal, how often does He throw in the enjoyable things along the way! What is empty apart from Him is overflowing in His presence. But the fulfillment, the meaning, the purpose, is always in Him and not in the blessing.

When we expect the blessings to fulfill us, we will find a world full of vanity. But seek first the Kingdom of God, and see if you don’t find a world of fulfilling blessings in the process.