By Pastor Joel Lawler

The day after Barry Bonds broke the home run record, I was listening to Colin Cowherd on ESPN radio. He was talking about Barry Bonds and he said something that I found interesting. He said that besides the whole steroids issue, the reason that most fans and media don't care about Bond's achievement is that Bonds never lets people in. He is an island to himself and therefore no one is attached to him. Back in 1995, for Christmas, my wife bought me Cleveland Indians tickets. I grew up in Cleveland loving baseball and being a big fan of the Tribe. The tickets were for late in the season. She could not have picked a better game. First, the Indians won and clinched a playoff spot which was the first time in 40 plus years that they had been to the post season. More importantly, it was the game after Cal Ripken broke the all time consecutive games record and he was playing in Cleveland that night.

Cleveland fans are as rough as they come on opposing teams and their players. They can be brutal. What was amazing was when Cal Ripken was announced, he received a standing ovation that went on for about 15 minutes. He let people into his life. Even though he played for the other team, we felt connected to him. He let people share the moment. We all took pleasure in his success.

Barry Bonds seemed very alone as he was honored for breaking one of sport's

greatest records. It sounded to me that his own words sound very forced and as if he is reading them. King Solomon was one of if not the wisest men to ever live. Rulers for other countries would travel great distances to consult with him because his wisdom was so great that he was renown for it. He also had incredible wealth, power and success. I think that God heaped all the other stuff on Solomon to give him credibility. When he says in the book of Ecclesiastes that he wrote, "Vanity, vanity is all vanity." he is not speaking from second hand knowledge. He has had it all. [women, money, power, intellect, success, looks…]. He lacked for nothing. He indulged himself in every pleasure and comfort imaginable. It left him empty.

There is authenticity in the words that money does not scratch life's greatest itch when they are spoken from a person of unimaginable wealth as opposed to someone who has never been rich. It is hard to argue that "sleeping with a different woman every night of the week does not bring happiness" when the guy saying it would have to sleep with 3 of them a day just to get around to all of his in a one year says it. But something is missing from his life.

Ecclesiastes reads to me like the memoirs of a broken hearted man. I wonder if Solomon had anyone close to him that cared enough to tell him that he was wrong in pursuing all these things? Did he let anyone into his life and give them

the permission to speak the truth in love to him and point out the errors that he was making?

I worked in Memphis and while I was there, I took a tour of Graceland. What struck me was how incredibly driven Elvis Presley was. He worked extremely hard and achieved great success. There was a sadness to seeing all his gold records and awards. He was very alone and got caught up in destructive behaviors. Did he have anyone in his life that told him that he was going down the wrong path?

We all need people close enough and who love us enough to tell us the truth even when it is not what we want to hear. We need to let people into our lives. We were not created to be islands to ourselves.
.