Enjoy this message from Pastor Tyler Schoenberger called "Carpe Diem" on Sunday, September 6, 2026 at Reach Church in Bear, Delaware!

Ecclesiastes chapter two wrestles honestly with one of life's most persistent questions: if pleasure, wisdom, and hard work all leave us empty, what are we actually living for? The writer observes that work, though originally designed by God as something good and purposeful, now carries a weight it was never meant to bear. Sin introduced resistance, anxiety, and frustration into everyday labor, and the result is that even our best efforts feel like striving after the wind. The wisest conclusion life under the sun can offer is simply to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in your toil, which is essentially the philosophy of carpe diem. Seize the day. Enjoy what you have while you have it.

But carpe diem, as reasonable as it sounds, still runs out. Every meal ends. Every memory fades. Every good experience passes. The Apostle Paul himself acknowledged that if the resurrection is not real, then eating and drinking is about the best we can do. The problem is that no amount of seized days can make the fleeting last. This is where Jesus steps into the picture and changes everything. On the night He was betrayed, He took bread and a cup, the very symbols of our impermanence, and transformed their meaning entirely. What once pointed to how quickly life passes now points toward something eternal.

Communion is not simply a remembrance of the past. It is an anticipation of what is coming. The bread and the cup are an appetizer for the marriage supper of the Lamb described in Scripture, a feast that will never end and a joy that will never run dry. Revelation 22 paints a picture of that future with no more thorns, no more sorrow, no more vanity, just everlasting peace and joy in the presence of God. Carpe diem says to enjoy it while it lasts. But the hope found in Christ says this is only a taste, and the best is still yet to come.