As many of us know, the beginning of this week marked the championship game that closes the college basketball season:  the NCAA championship.  For those who follow such things, this game is a huge moment in their lives.  They plan parties and vacations around it.  In the big picture, however, a basketball game played between two teams of pampered, well-fed American college students is of relatively little consequence.
      This was brought home to me with fresh force as I was reading through Ecclesiastes this morning.  "All is futility," the writer says, "all is futility."  Though the writer counsels elsewhere to "enjoy life," he recognizes acutely that, in the end, life is finite.  It will not last.  One day, all who live will be gone.
     Like basketball, like a basketball championship.  Life is deeply meaningful and unarguably profound, yes, but it is so frightfully transient.
     Does it need more?