Daily Devotionals

'Every Day Light' with Selwyn Hughes

Devotional: September 27th

For Reading and Meditation:
     Ecclesiastes 3:2-4a

Perhaps no better cross-section of life can be found anywhere than in these beautiful and poetic verses. Solomon unfolds for us the variety of life, all of which takes place under the providential hand of God. There are fourteen contrasts. (1) There is a time to be born and a time to die. No one can negotiate his or her arrival into this world, not the natural time of departure either. Both are beyond our control. (2) A time to plant and a time to uproot. Mess around with Mother Nature, and you won't get anywhere. Follow the order and you get results; ignore it and you get consequences. (3) A time to kill and a time to heal. This is not to be seen as an approval of killing, but a simple statement of fact - wars and killing are a part of human life. But so, also, is healing. Charles Swindoll puts it like this: "Life seems strangely fixed between a battlefield and a first aid station, between murder and medicine." (4) A time to tear down and a time to build. Demolition is followed by construction, then after a while more demolition and more construction. Isn't this a pattern with which every generation is familiar? (5) A time to weep and a time to laugh. Some people have more sorrow than laughter, but no one goes through the world without touching both. Are you shedding a lot of tears over some great difficulty or problem at the moment? I promise you in God's Name, sometime, not too far distant in the future, your heart will laugh again.

Help me see, dear Father, that though I pass through times of sorrow and difficulty, nothing can shake the rock of existence on which I stand. In sorrow or in laughter may I never lose sight of You. In Jesus' Name I ask it. Amen.