A few nights ago, I had a dream that has me thinking.
I was tired, the kind of tired that settles in after a full week of work, when your body is worn out but your mind refuses to power down. Sometime early in the morning, I remember waking up and checking my email, needing to make sure I hadn’t overslept or missed something important. It’s a strange pressure we carry almost without noticing, like a reflex. Once I reassured myself that everything was fine, I finally fell back asleep.
That’s when the dream began.
I was swimming in a lake. It was a beautiful lake, peaceful, open, quiet. I wasn’t rushed. I wasn’t checking anything. I wasn’t keeping track of time. I was just swimming and snorkeling, fully present, and genuinely enjoying it. Snorkeling is one of my favorite things to do, so it was great.
When I eventually made my way toward the shore, I noticed something odd. Someone had left all of their belongings along the edge of the water, shoes, glasses, and several binders stuffed with papers. I stood there dripping and curious, scanning the shoreline as if I had stumbled into something that didn’t belong to me. I looked around for the owner, but no one was there. So I opened the binders.
Inside were papers from my high school years, documents that felt strangely familiar. Old assignments. Reminders of the past. And then, unexpectedly, there were papers from my current job as well. Things from my life right now. The present. The responsibilities. The work. The weight of what I’m carrying these days. None of it made sense. Who would leave all of this here?
I felt a sudden urgency. Whoever these things belonged to needed them. I wanted to find the owner. I wanted to return everything. I searched and searched, but I never found the owner. Eventually, I turned back toward the lake.
While I was gone, the water had risen. The shoreline looked different now. The binders I’d seen earlier were no longer safe and dry, they were soaked, the pages sticking together, the corners curling and dissolving. They were sinking into the lake, as if being swallowed. The shoes were gone. The sunglasses had disappeared. And the binders, filled with past accomplishments and present responsibilities, were slipping beneath the surface.
I went back into the water, trying to retrieve what I could as it drifted toward the bottom. I tried to save the papers, to hold on to something, anything. Even though I didn’t know who they belonged to, I felt responsible. But it was impossible. The pages were disintegrating in the water, breaking apart in my hands.
Somewhere in the middle of all that effort, I noticed someone standing nearby, a teacher from the high school. He was watching me. Advising me. Calling me to stop swimming. Calling me to come out of the water.
And then I woke up.
It wasn’t until I was fully awake that I realized those binders belonged to me. The person who had left behind all the papers and proof and performance and identity markers....that person was me.
The binders represented so much of what we think matters: our achievements, our titles, our productivity, our history. All the carefully held evidence that we’ve done enough, been enough, built enough. The things we cling to when we’re afraid we might be forgotten.
But in the dream, when the water rose, all of it became as fragile as paper. The pages blurred. The binders sank. The things that once felt important didn’t stay important for long. Because one day, the things we spend our lives chasing may feel as useless as soggy papers at the bottom of a lake.
But we won’t be useless.
And we won’t be forgotten.
Because what matters most isn’t what we’ve collected or proven. What matters is who we are, and even more, whose we are. What matters is our relationship with the One who teaches us, the One who watches us flailing in the water and calls us out, the One who holds us steady when everything else starts to sink.
The lake can rise. The world can shift. The old landmarks can change until we don’t recognize them anymore. But His voice remains.
What Matters In Eternity?
So many of the things we strain for, stress over, sacrifice peace for, are the very things that will one day be forgotten. They feel important now. They look impressive stacked neatly in binders, saved in files, and displayed online for the world to see. They give the illusion of permanence, as though they will always be there to prove our worth. But time has a way of rising, and when it does, much of what we once held so tightly drifts to the bottom like soggy paper.
It isn’t that these things are wrong. Education isn’t wrong. Hard work isn’t wrong. Resumes aren’t wrong. We need jobs and stability. We are called to steward our responsibilities well. But we were never meant to build our identity on things that can sink. When life shifts, when health changes, when a job ends, when seasons turn, or when the world rearranges itself without warning, those familiar “proofs” of worth can disappear faster than we ever imagined. The shoes. The glasses. The binders. All of it gone.
So what remains when the water rises?
What remains is the relationship between the created and the Creator. What we do with the days we’ve been given. What remains is how we love, how we serve, how we forgive, and how we show up when someone is hurting. God cares about how we treat the people who can’t offer us anything in return. Our lives are measured not by what we accumulate, but by whether we make room for compassion, whether we notice the poor, whether we help the weak, whether we choose gentleness over sharpness, and whether we quietly and faithfully work to further the Kingdom of God while we’re still here.
Solomon understood this better than most. In Scripture, he had everything: wealth beyond imagination, power, influence, admiration, and achievement. He had more than enough, in fact, more than anyone else on earth at the time. And he had wisdom too, the kind the world had never seen. Solomon didn’t stumble into that wisdom by accident. He asked God for it, and God was pleased with his request. God gave it generously, and Solomon became known across the world as the wisest man alive.
If anyone should have been satisfied, it should have been Solomon. If anyone should have discovered the secret to “enough,” it should have been him. And yet, in Ecclesiastes, Solomon says something that still startles us: that the pursuit of it all is meaningless, like chasing the wind. How could the most wealthy, most influential, most accomplished king on earth look at his own life and say, This isn’t it?
But Solomon is telling us what we keep learning the hard way. Even wisdom isn’t enough to make us whole. Even success isn’t enough to anchor the soul. Even abundance can still leave us empty. His wealth and achievements weren’t lacking because they weren’t impressive, they were lacking because they were never eternal.
What matters most on this fallen earth isn’t found in those binders. It isn’t found in Instagram posts, polished resumes, or the carefully curated lives we build to prove we’re worthy. It isn’t found in being admired, promoted, applauded, or perfectly “put together.” Those are fragile treasures. They don’t hold when the water rises.
But the Kingdom does. And the love of God does. And the people we serve, the ones we help, the ones we pray for, the ones we carry when they can’t carry themselves, those things echo longer than paper ever could.
Collecting Binders
We carry a lot in this world. We always have. From the beginning of Genesis, humanity has lived under the weight of a broken world. When the earth fell under the curse, work became hard. Putting food on the table became hard. Relationships became complicated and fragile. Nothing came easily anymore. Life itself required effort, endurance, and persistence. We would no longer move through this world untouched, and we don’t.
So we carry it. We carry expectations placed on us when we were young, long before we had the language to name them. We carry the pressure to succeed, to perform, to be useful, to be admired. We carry disappointments and losses we never fully processed, griefs we learned to tuck away so we could keep functioning. And then, as adults, we layer today’s expectations on top of all of that history. No wonder the weight feels so heavy. Pressure didn’t start last week. It’s been with us our entire lives.
Everyone responds to that weight differently. I tend to swing to extremes. When pressure builds, I can become incredibly productive. I organize. I achieve. I collect binders. There’s comfort in order and accomplishment, in being able to point to something tangible and say, See? I’m handling this. But when the pressure becomes too much, I swing the other direction. I shut down. I hide. I numb myself with distractions. I scroll. I watch YouTube. I pretend the binders aren’t there at all. And I suspect most of us recognize ourselves somewhere in that tension between overfunctioning and avoidance.
That’s why Jesus’ words land with such unexpected gentleness when we finally slow down enough to hear them. He says, “Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” At first, that sounds almost impossible. A light burden? An easy yoke? In a world that has never felt light or easy?
A yoke, after all, was a wooden beam placed across the shoulders of oxen so they could pull a load together. It didn’t remove the work; it redistributed the weight. The purpose of the yoke was never comfort, it was companionship. Jesus isn’t promising a life without effort. He’s offering a way to stop carrying everything alone.
That offer stands in direct contrast to what the world tells us. The world insists that the solution to pressure is toughness, strength, and relentless effort. Work harder. Carry more. Fill both hands. Prove your worth. But God tells a different story. And interestingly, so does Solomon.
Back in Ecclesiastes again, Solomon observes that “better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” He had lived the life of two full hands. He knew the cost of always reaching for more. And he noticed that peace is often lost not in scarcity, but in excess.
Suddenly, the binders in my dream make sense. I’ve been collecting them my whole life, past and present, achievement and expectation, responsibility layered on responsibility, gripping tightly with both hands. And maybe the invitation has never been to organize them better or carry them longer. Maybe it has always been to set them down. To take the yoke Jesus offers instead. To learn that one handful, held with Him, is lighter than two held alone.
Life Without Binders
A few years ago, our house caught on fire.
It started after a Christmas toy malfunctioned and exploded, and within moments, firefighters were on the scene while everything we owned burned. The kids were taken into a neighbor’s house so they didn’t have to watch it happen, but I stayed outside and watched the flames take over the place we had lived our lives. Still, even in the shock of that moment, I remember feeling profoundly grateful that every one of us made it out safely.
Standing there, watching everything burn, I knew something important: all of that stuff could be replaced. Not everything, there were mementos and irreplaceable pieces of our story, but the house, the furniture, the belongings… those things were not us. I still had me. I still had my family.
And yet, even that experience isn’t quite the same as the question on my mind now.
What would happen if I lost my binders?
Who am I without my accomplishments, my achievements, my productivity, my carefully earned proof that I’ve done something worthwhile with my life? Who am I without the man-made awards, the recognition, the reputation I’ve built?
Those questions go deeper than losing possessions. Because binders don’t just hold papers, they hold identity. They shouldn't but they do. They hold validation. They hold the quiet hope that if we stack enough evidence together, it will finally mean something.
When I start looking at my life through the lens of Christ, I have to ask myself some uncomfortable questions. What actually matters to Christ? Are my days centered on the things He values most? Do I care more about my own ego, my reputation, and getting ahead than I do about someone who is suffering and needs compassion? Do I miss the things God cares deeply about simply because I’m too busy checking things off a list?
Of course, work matters. Deliverables matter. Responsibilities matter. God understands that we live in a world where bills must be paid and work must be done. And in His grace, I’ve often found that He gives us time for both, time to work faithfully and time to love well. The question is not whether we can get things done. The question is where our heart lies while we’re doing them.
Are our hearts aligned with His? Are we seeking the things He asks us to seek?
And yet, here’s the strange and beautiful truth: when we start living that upside-down Kingdom now, we begin to experience a deeper peace and joy. Not because life gets easier, but because we’re finally doing what we were made to do. We were never designed to live for ourselves alone. We were designed for a selfless life.
Solomon talks about this, too. In Ecclesiastes, he warns that it is better to sit with the realities of life, even sorrow, than to drown ourselves in endless entertainment. He writes that it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feasting, because reflection shapes the heart. Remember, he could have had any entertainment he wanted, at any time, without consequence. His wealth was endless. Pleasure was always within reach.
And yet, he tells us not to chase it.
Meanwhile, we can flip to the New Testament and find Paul writing letters from prison.
Not from a place of comfort or security, but from a cell. From chains. From hunger and uncertainty. From a life stripped of status, safety, and control. If anyone had reason to despair, to feel forgotten, to question whether obedience had been worth it, it was Paul. And yet, as we read his letters, we don’t find bitterness or self-pity. We find joy. We find contentment. We find purpose.
Paul writes about rejoicing even in suffering. He speaks of learning to be content whether he has much or little. He encourages believers to set their minds on what is true, noble, and eternal. This isn’t the language of a man who has lost everything that matters. It’s the voice of someone who has discovered what actually matters.
That contrast should stop us in our tracks.
By the world’s standards, Paul’s life looked like failure. He had given up power, position, safety, and reputation. He was misunderstood, persecuted, imprisoned, and ultimately killed. If success is measured by comfort and applause, Paul had none of it. And yet, his life continues to bear fruit thousands of years later. His words still shape hearts. His faith still strengthens believers. His obedience still echoes.
Solomon had everything the world promises will make us happy, and he called it chasing the wind. Paul had almost nothing, and he spoke of peace that passes understanding.
I think we’ve gotten it backwards.
We chase security, while Paul chased faithfulness.
We chase comfort, while Paul embraced obedience.
We chase recognition, while Paul poured himself out for others.
Paul understood something we resist: that joy is not the reward for an easy life, but the fruit of a surrendered one. Contentment doesn’t come from having enough, it comes from knowing Who is enough. Purpose isn’t found in protecting our lives, but in giving them away.
In the end, God isn’t going to ask us for our binders. He isn’t going to ask how full our hands were, how impressive our resumes looked, or how admired we were by the world. He’s going to care about our hearts.
And the strange, upside-down truth of the Kingdom is this: when we finally loosen our grip on the binders and place our hearts fully in His hands, we discover the very joy and peace we were chasing all along.
