When You’re Wondering, ‘Is That All There Is?’

Years ago, Peggy Lee recorded a haunting tune, “Is That All There Is?” Written by songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the 1960s, it wasn’t one of those upbeat, feel-good songs. Not the kind that keeps us humming during the day with a smile on our face. Basically, the tune puts a story of disillusionment to music.

“Is That All There Is” tells about a little girl’s disappointments: She witnesses her family home go up in flames. At the age of 12 she enjoys a circus, but afterward experiences a feeling of emptiness. The girl grows up to be a woman and falls in love, but eventually that love is lost. 

 

After each loss or disappointment, the song repeats the refrain, “Is that all there is, is that all there is? If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing. Let’s break out the booze and have a ball, if that’s all there is.” In other words, when life lets you down, focus on the distractions of the present moment.

 

This is hardly a new perspective. King Solomon of Israel expressed similar sentiments more profoundly thousands of years ago. Describing his life, the king honestly wrote, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure…. 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” (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11). Other translations express it, “vanity, all is vanity” or “everything is futile.” Solomon might as well have been singing, “Is that all there is?”

 

Chris Simpson speaking at 
the annual Chattanooga
Leadership Prayer Breakfast.

At the recent Chattanooga Area Leadership Prayer Breakfast, speaker Chris Simpson shared his life story, recounting how he had risen from a family of modest means to achieve great success in college, the military, and then in the U.S. Secret Service, serving under seven different Presidents. Any casual observer would have concluded, ‘That guy has it made!’ And outwardly, Simpson certainly did. 

Except inwardly, he too was wondering, ‘Is that all there is?’ Like King Solomon, as Simpson appraised his many accomplishments, terms like meaningless, vanity, and futility must have been marching through his mind. That all changed, he explained, when he decided to stop chasing after worldly success and recognition, choosing to follow Jesus Christ instead.

 

Over the years I’ve met and interviewed dozens of high achievers like Simpson, people who had devoted their lives to climbing the proverbial “ladder of success,” only to discover it was leaning against the wrong wall. Great amounts of time, energy and talent invested, and for what? Only when they experienced life-changing encounters with Christ did life take on true meaning.

 

In Ecclesiastes, Solomon did not remain stuck in a dismal tale of woe and dissatisfaction. He learned that in the midst of this transitory life, he could experience fulfillment in a relationship with God. He observed, “Then I realized that it is good and proper for a man to eat and drink, and to find satisfaction in his toilsome labor under the sun during the few days of life God has given him – for this is his lot” (Ecclesiastes 5:18).

 

And the king closed with this declaration: “Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, including every hidden thing, whether it is good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:13-14).

 

Today, Chris Simpson appreciates the successes he attained, but has a new mission. Instead of serving Presidents he’s representing the King of kings, living out 2 Corinthians 5:20 which says, “We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.”

 

As president of CBMC International, Simpson travels the world, meeting with business and professional people and telling them his story. He has gone from emptiness to fulness, discovering the truth of Christ’s promise, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). 

 

This assurance is available to us all, no matter where we find ourselves in life. When we reach the point of asking, “Is that all there is?” Jesus is waiting to fulfill His promise, as another translation states it, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Maybe We Need an Outbreak of FOMO – and JOMO

These are the days of acronyms. It’s like swimming in alphabet soup. LOL – laughing out loud. OMG – oh my gosh. IMHO – in my honest opinion. SMH – shaking my head. I’m sure there are many that I’ve never heard of. Thanks to texting and social media, we’re experiencing an ongoing explosion of ways for writing what we’re thinking without actually writing it out.

 

My personal favorite is FOMO – fear of missing out. It’s one reason people devote so much time to social media. They don’t want to miss the latest posts from friends, family members, even people they don’t like. The same applies to the Internet, constantly logging onto favorite sites to make sure we don’t miss out on the latest developments, whatever they may be. Some people are “news junkies,” following their favorite news sources throughout the day – for fear of missing out.

FOMO isn’t necessarily bad. When desktop computers first came out, some were resistant – me included. But here I am, writing on my computer, memories of manual and electric typewriters becoming ancient history. It might have taken a while, but we eventually tried out personal computers, partly due to fear of missing out. 

 

The same applies to cellular phones, now known as smartphones. The first ones were nearly as large as a briefcase and only the affluent could afford them. As with most technology, cell phones became more advanced, less costly – and smaller. Now practically everyone has at least one. Why did we finally buy them? FOMO.

 

Maybe one day we’ll all have an electric car for the same reason, but that’s a topic for another time. In any case, I’ve learned fear of missing out can be a positive motivator. Even spiritually.

 

Years ago, FOMO prompted me to make an impulsive decision. Long before becoming a follower of Christ, I attended church occasionally but didn’t know the Lord. If you’d asked me then if I would go to heaven when I died, the best answer I could have given was, “I hope so.” Maybe I thought “punching my church attendance card” would help.

 

After getting a job in a new city, someone at work told me about her church. Again, thinking attending church was something I should do at least once in a while, I agreed to visit. At the time I didn’t know one church from another, so why not try this one?

 

During the pastor’s sermon, I understood him to say that anyone who’d not been baptized by immersion wouldn’t go to heaven. I’d never heard that, but the thought came to my mind, “I’m not going to be left out on some technicality,” so I went forward – and got baptized.

 

This isn’t to speak negatively about baptism in any way, and I know there are a variety of views on who should be baptized, when, how, and why. But the only reason I agreed to be baptized then was FOMO. I felt certain there was a heaven, and when the time came to leave this life, I didn’t want to miss out.

 

Lots of folks take their initial steps of faith because of FOMO. It might be a desire to know they’ll go to heaven when they die – or not go to hell. A cynic might say they want “fire insurance.” Others might have concluded there must be something more to life than constantly striving for more or the unending routine of daily living. They resonate with the old Peggy Lee tune, “Is That All There Is?” They’re missing out on something, but don’t know what.

 

Some may have observed a friend’s, coworker’s or neighbor’s life, seeing in them an inner quality they lack. They wonder what’s different about the other person’s life. “What do you have that I don’t?” they might even ask. Over time this can open a door for an honest conversation about the Bible and Jesus Christ – who He was (and is), what He did, and how we should respond to the offer described in Romans 6:23, “the free gift of God [that] is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

 

Even for genuine followers of Jesus, those who’ve sincerely trusted in Him by faith, FOMO can be helpful. Because the act of receiving Christ, as described in John 1:12 – “Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God” – is just the first big step of faith. It’s the beginning of a lifelong adventure, a day-to-day process of having the Lord reveal what it means to experience the “abundant life” He describes in John 10:10.

 

We’ve all gone through the COVID pandemic which affected us in many ways. Maybe we need an outbreak of FOMO, causing us to stop going through the motions or relegating God to one area of our lives and letting Him infuse everything we do. Ephesians 3:20 says He is “able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” I don’t know about you, but I have a healthy fear of missing out on that!

Who knows? Our “FOMO” might transform into JOMO, the joy of missing out. This can enable us to enjoy spending free time doing what we really want to do – especially cultivating a growing relationship with the Lord – without worrying that something more interesting is happening elsewhere. 

What to Do with Eternity in Our Hearts

I’m old enough to remember the haunting tune sung by Peggy Lee, “Is That All There Is?” Numerous times over the years I’ve heard successful businessmen refer to it in describing their climbs up the corporate ladder and discovering how unfulfilling that had been for them.

 

But we don’t have to be in the business or professional world to occasionally have similar thoughts. We get married, filled with dreams of happily ever after and then, when the honeymoon glow has long faded, we might begin to wonder, “Is that all there is?” Sooner or later, idyllic imaginings about the joys of parenthood are similarly dashed when we suddenly realize that our children aren’t perfect – and as parents, neither are we. “Is that all there is?”

 

I’m sure there are many athletes and actors, once their aspirations for fame and fortune have been fully realized, have reached the “Is that all there is?” stage. Reports of alcoholism, drug abuse, divorce and suicide give us clues that the so-called “good life” isn’t necessarily as good as it’s hyped up to be.

 

The question takes on even more profound meaning when we start to recognize the brevity of life. In our younger days, we seem convinced we’ll live forever. That’s why many young people take an approach to life that’s both carefree and careless. Feelings of invincibility can do that. But then we start to see lives of loved ones and friends coming to an end. “Forever” has an expiration date.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The timeless, eternal God, who has no beginning and no end, desires for our grip on this life to be a loose one. In the Scriptures we read, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

 

It says the Lord has “set eternity in our hearts,” a deep-down sense that as we appraise our existence on earth and wonder, “Is that all there is?” we have the assurance that no, it’s not. There’s more to come.

 

Years ago, I interacted quite a bit with a hardened atheist – unsuccessfully, I must admit. In his words, after this life has reached its inevitable conclusion, “all we are is dust in the wind.” A refrain from a different song – sung by Kansas, not Peggy Lee.

 

The skeptic I talked with certainly wasn’t the only person to hold those sentiments. But even a child knows, “Eternity is a REALLY long time,” making our temporal lives less than a blip on the screen. This being the case, even the most productive life doesn’t amount to much. That is, unless there’s indeed hope for life beyond the one we’ve come to know and love.

 

Earthly life and eternal life. These make up a recurring theme in both the Old and New Testaments. They’re such pressing concerns that in his first letter, John the apostle wrote these encouraging words to believers in the first century: 

“And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.” Then John added the clincher: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God [Jesus Christ] so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:11-13).

 

How important is it that we can know for certain that we have eternal life? If you’ve ever walked past or driven by a cemetery, it’s a solemn reminder that as Ecclesiastes 3:2 states it, there’s “a time to be born and a time to die.” Is that all there is, living out whatever time we’re allotted and then coming to an absolute dead end, whether it be a grave, tomb, mausoleum or crematorium? 

 

There’s not much that can top the hope and confidence that for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ, when we draw our final earthly breath then, to quote yet another popular song, “We’ve only just begun to live.” (Thank you, Karen Carpenter, for that lovely thought.)

 

But what can knowledge that we have eternal life do for us, other than assure that our existence won’t dissipate like steam coming out of a teapot? It can give us meaning and a sense of purpose, far beyond our strivings for a promotion and pay raise at work, a better golf score, or any of the many other things – tangible and intangible – that tend to occupy our time and attention. Because all of those will be forgotten eventually, perhaps sooner than we think.

 

During His “sermon on the mount,” Jesus gave a description of the impact having eternity in our hearts can make: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:19-20).

We’ve often heard it said, “You can’t take it with you,” but as Jesus promised, we can send it on ahead. 

Is That All There Is?

Why is it some people that seemingly have it all together suddenly forget where they put it? Why do individuals who appear to “have it made” embark on a path of self-destruction, often taking down friends and family members in the process?

We see it all the time – on TV, the Internet, newspapers and magazines (for those of us that still read them). Business executives and high-ranking politicians, despite their prominence, influence and huge salaries, experiencing colossal ethical and moral failures. Famed celebrities and professional athletes destroying their lives and careers with drug and alcohol abuse, financial recklessness, violence and boorish behavior.

But you don’t have to be among the rich and famous to experience such personal calamity: The “perfect couple” that breaks apart in a bitter, acrimonious divorce. The pillar of the community who one day crashes and burns in the flames of indiscretion. The pastor whose walk proves unequal to his talk.

Years ago, songstress Peggy Lee had a hit tune with the haunting refrain, “Is that all there is?” Perhaps that’s why the rich and famous – along with the not-so-rich and not-so-famous – often seem so miserable. They’ve achieved lofty goals and realized cherished dreams, but it turns out those weren’t what they expected. Unfulfilled and disillusioned, they too start to wonder, “Is that all there is?”

Are we living for just the tip of the rope?

Recently I saw a video of Francis Chan, a popular preacher and best-selling author (Crazy Love, Multiply) illustrating a key factor in this puzzling phenomenon. In the video, Chan showed his audience a rope that stretched the length of a long stage from which he spoke. He held the end piece of the rope, about three inches long, that had been painted red.

The rope’s entirety, he said, represented the timeline of one’s eternal existence. (In actuality, the rope would have had to be unending, but Chan was making a point.) The three-inch painted segment represented a person’s lifetime on earth. The problem, according to Chan, is we’re living for the wrong thing. “Some of you,” he said, “all you think about is this red part. You’re consumed with this.”

What about the rest, Chan asked? “Everyone lives for the red part. No one’s thinking about the millions of years afterward.”

I think he’s right. What if we viewed earthly life as just a warm-up, and death not as the finish line but as the starting line to a glorious, eternal existence for which this life has been mere preparation?

We see this described in 1 Corinthians 15:51-54, “Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed…. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed…. Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

That is a distinctive of the Christian faith, the earnest expectation and hope believers have for life after death. As Titus 2:13 states, “while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Most of the time, however, as in Chan’s example, we concentrate all of our attention and effort on the tip of the rope, ignoring the remainder that extends far beyond view. Is it any wonder that even the most accomplished, most esteemed, most successful among us are prone to one day look around themselves and wonder, “Is that all there is?”

Not Getting an ‘F’ in Life

If you’ve viewed many non-family movies of late, you’ve probably noticed Hollywood’s fascination with the so-called “F-word.” I’m not going to write about that, but recently it occurred to me that some other words starting with “f” are also problematic, although in different ways.

"F" is a letter that's
usually best to avoid - on an
exam, a report card, or in life.

In a devotional book I enjoy reading, Grace for the Moment, author Max Lucado makes this assertion: “My life is not futile. My failures are not fatal. My life is not final.”

Simple statements. But profound. At least for each of us that profess to be followers of Jesus.

Author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau referred to the seeming futility of life when he wrote, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” In a tune from the ‘60s, Peggy Lee sang the haunting refrain, “Is that all there is?” Sadly, many people today share that pessimism.

But the Bible asserts our lives aren’t futile – they have purpose and meaning. “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’” (Jeremiah 29:11). God has specific plans for each of us. Another passage affirms our special status with God: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Peter 2:9).

Failure is another concern that plagues many of us. "What if I'm not good enough?" "What if I can't finish what I've started?" Fear of failure, experts tell us, can immobilize us, causing us to choose no action at all rather than attempting something and failing in the process.

The Scriptures present numerous examples of people who experienced crushing failures, yet were restored to usefulness by God: For instance, the Old Testament includes Abraham, Jacob, Moses and David. And in the New Testament we find Peter, who betrayed Christ three times yet became a pillar of the early Church, and the apostle Paul, who was transformed from being a persecutor and murderer of Christians into a bold, outspoken disciple of Jesus.

And the greatest assurance of all is that life is not final. Contrary to those who believe there is nothing beyond the grave, the Word of God promises that in many respects, death is just the beginning of real life. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23). Jesus told His followers,  “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am” (John 14:3).

So as we place our trust in Christ one day at a time, we need not fear futility, failure or finality. He has overcome them all, and we’re promised, “in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).