it's all so meaningless

That girl that just took your seat in world civ purposefully?  Doesn't matter.

Your hair frizzing due to the ridiculous amount of humidity in the air?  Who cares.

Didn't make an A on your English final?  So what.

It's all meaningless.

"So I came to hate life because everything here done under the sun is so troubling.  Everything is meaningless-- like chasing the wind." --Ecclesiates 2:17

Does Jesus want us to hate life?  No, I don't think that's what Solomon's trying to get across here.  He wants us to realize how pointless this life is.  That everything we get angry about, everything we fret over, everything we work for-- it's pointless unless it's for the kingdom.

My youth group had a mini-retreat this weekened-- Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning.  And one of the main things that jumped out at nearly everyone was a thought of the speaker, Mr. Jay.  He elaborated on it, and the more he talked, the more God embedded this thought in my mind-- everything is meaningless.

See, Mr. Jay imagines there's a wall of fire before you get to the pearly gates.  And every person standing in front of it has a "ball of stuff" in their arms.  This stuff is what you've done with your life.  Some people have small balls, while others have exceedingly large ones.  You watched a chick flick last Saturday.  That's in your ball of stuff.  You shared Jesus with a second grader at VBS.  That's in there too.  Everything you've ever done in your life is rolled up in this ball.

Then everyone steps into the wall of fire.  And as your passing through it, you realize the fire's not burning you, just your ball. It begins to shrink smaller and smaller until you're finally on the other side.  You look around to find that some of the people that had those huge balls of stuff now have nothing at all.  But some of the people with the smaller balls of stuff still have almost everything they had at the beginning.

This got me to thinking-- would my stuff survive or would most of it be burned away?

It's all meaningless, friends.  All of it that's not for Jesus means nothing.

".. each one's work will become obvious, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire; the fire will test the quality of each one's work.  If anyone's work that he has built survives, he will receive a reward.  If anyone's work is burned up, it will be lost, but he will be saved; yet it will be like an escape through fire."
--1 Corinthians 3:13-15

I don't want to just escape through the fire.  I want my work to have eternal value.  Because people's souls... they don't just mean something.  They mean everything.