For those of us who follow college basketball, you know that two nights ago marked the NCAA men's basketball championship.  The culmination of several weeks of what many people call "March Madness," the game is, for many sports fans, one of the highlights of the year.

    Though I am happy for the players who won the championship, and while I am delighted for the joy and excitement that marked the many games that led up to the final game, I also think that, well, such things are ultimately contests between fit and well-fed American college students amidst a world torn with suffering.

    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."  Although 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?