Daily Devotionals

'Every Day Light' with Selwyn Hughes

Devotional: September 12th

For Reading and Meditation:
     Ecclesiastes 5:13-17

Solomon is still harping on about money. Pretty boring you might think. But isn't he putting his finger on the pulse of our problems? We try to find in gold what we ought to be finding in God. Consider this, says Solomon: "Savings are put into risky investments that turn sour, and soon there is nothing left to pass on to one's son. The man who speculates is soon back to where he began - with nothing – all his hard work has been for nothing; he has been working for the wind. It is all swept away. All the rest of his life he is under a cloud - gloomy, discouraged, frustrated, and angry" (vv. 14-17, TLB). Clearly, the soul's security cannot be found in money. When will people learn this? Some of the ancients used to have their wealth put into their tombs alongside their bodies when they died, so that they could keep it with them in the afterlife. These days people have learned that you can't take the treasures of time into eternity; that's why you never see a trailer attached to a hearse. When we consider material things we face this sharp issue: either we transform the material into the image of the spiritual, or the material will transform us into its own image. Those who allow the material to get the upper hand and begin to serve Mammon soon begin to look like their god. They become materialized. The light dies out in their eyes and the winter of materialism sets in.

O God, save me I pray from being transformed into the image of the material. Help me to keep my gaze constantly on You so that I become more and more transformed into the image of Your Son. This I ask in Christ's peerless and precious Name. Amen.