It Was Like He Never Existed

Monday Devotional

What does a man gain from all his labor

at which he toils under the sun?

Ecclesiastes 1:3

“It was like he never existed.”

I looked at Ernie as he spoke these words and saw the gentle grace of a life well lived. He had worked hard to support his family, and now in retirement he was pouring his energies into building up the men’s ministry of his church.

Ernie chose early retirement in part because of something that occurred just a few years before he left. He worked for one of the most stable and famous companies in the United States. Until the late 1980s, if you could land a job with this company, you pretty much figured you had a job for life. They paid well but demanded a lot out of their workers.

“We gave our lives to the company,” Ernie said. “They took care of us, but they expected us to organize our lives around our work. If we ever said no, even once, we’d be taken off the track of promotion and kept in a vocational eddy for the rest of our careers. So we got to work early and stayed late.”

One of Ernie’s coworkers was a younger man in his late forties who had worked side by side with Ernie for years. One morning, the man failed to arrive at work, and Ernie assumed he was sick—until a call came from his wife at 8:30 a.m. with the shocking news that the man had died. His heart had stopped while he was eating breakfast.