Striving after wind

In ten years of driving, I have never owned a vehicle with working air conditioning. In Texas, A/C is virtually a must-have for a car. During the summer, your options are either functioning A/C, or sweat trickling down your back and soaking through your clothes before you've driven twenty minutes. So, when I got a new-to-me vehicle about two months ago, one of my first fixer-upper projects on it was the air conditioning. Buckle your seat belts; this one's a saga.
At the end of August, otherwise known as the HOT season in Texas, I took my truck to a mechanic to use a no-charge A/C check coupon. He said the blower door actuator (which is what switches from hot to cold air when you move the knob on your A/C control panel) was not functioning, and the freon needed to be topped off. After Googling for the part and YouTubing the replacement how-to, I found the Haynes manual at a library, and set out to get my A/C working.
This may come as a revelation, but I'm neither very handy nor mechanically-minded. For about an hour I followed all the diagnostic steps from the Haynes manual and the YouTube video with painstaking attention to detail (something I am very, very good at). But, when I had located the blower door actuator, I found that it had been mysteriously disconnected. Cursing the mechanic for misleading me, I re-connected it - and, presto, my fan started blowing air again!
But it was hot air. Which meant that something was still wrong with the door actuator. So I spent another hour trying to pry out the old part and see what shape it was in. After another hour, all I had to show for my efforts were scraped knuckles and a furrowed brow. Apparently, getting a socket wrench on a bolt you can't see, and don't have a good enough angle on to ease into is not something I can put on my résumé. At this point, I had been working on the truck for about three hours, and Jessica came out to get me for lunch.
After eating, I went back out to try and finish the job, and Jessica came to see if she could use her small fingers to get the socket wrench on the Difficult Bolt (to use the technical term). She didn't have much more success than I did, but she wanted to stay out there while I was working, so I went at it again.
I'm ashamed to admit that after a little while, I lost my temper. I swore and fumed, all because of one little bolt that was preventing my happiness. Jessica tried to calm me and encouraged me to take a break from it, but I wouldn't have any of it. I wanted to get the thing done, and have my A/C. Ultimately, I wasn't able to get the bolt off, and had to go inside to work on other things.
The next day, Sunday, I decided that even though it was a Sabbath, I would go out to try and just finish up on the truck. Maybe one last effort would justify my bruised fingers and sore knuckles by getting that bolt off, replacing the blower door actuator, and getting the A/C to work. Strangely enough, I was able to get the bolt off quite easily, and check the old part to see if it was working.
It was. Which meant it wasn't the problem. As I felt my anger boiling and prepared to lash out with a fist to the dashboard or a choice expletive for the mechanic, a phrase from Ecclesiastes came to mind: "I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind" (1:14). (I had been listening to a sermon series on Ecclesiastes that had been preached at our new church a couple years ago, before we started going there, that our pastor had suggested the church listen to again.) I was deeply convicted of how I had been striving to make my life easier to such a degree that I would rail & rage about something as eternally insignificant as air conditioning, but I also had to laugh that I had quite literally been striving after a wind to cool me off.
In the series on Ecclesiastes, our pastor points out that the book is written with a view of life "under the sun" - i.e., the "human condition," existentialism, life absent God. I was forced to realise that I had been getting so wrapped up in getting this one thing done that it had become more important to me than remembering to eat, or trusting God to provide and resting for a day, or my relationship with my wife. In the midst of my striving, God graciously reminded me that this life isn't all there is, so if it's not going the way I want, it's not worth getting so frustrated that I lose sight of what really matters. And that's not to say I should just throw my hands up and quit trying to get my A/C working, either (I'm gonna need it to work to be able to transport a baby in about 4 months!) - but that is not the most important thing, because there is life above the sun.