DAILY DEVOTIONAL

We often become disappointed and disillusioned when our lives don’t go as planned. After all, shouldn’t our faithfulness and obedience to God count for something? Then after a brief life of toil, affliction and suffering, we all die. Happy Thursday everybody!

Since life seems so futile and meaningless, wouldn’t it better to die than live? The wise teacher says it is better to live with hope than to die and be forgotten. For the Christian, living with the hope of eternity, we get the best of both worlds. Paul captures it perfectly, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Philippians 1:21) Living for Christ and his mission brings joy and significance to our lives and to the lives of others. The wise teacher and the Scriptures give us some perspective for today.

But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished, and forever they have no more share in all that is done under the sun.

Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.

Let your garments be always white. Let not oil be lacking on your head.

Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that he has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going (Ecclesiastes 9:1-10).