Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Ecclesiastes 3-4
Key Verse
Ecclesiastes 3:20 — “All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”
Devotional Thought
The Preacher of Ecclesiastes has been everywhere and seen everything, and here in chapter three he lays out his great poem of seasons. Fourteen pairs of opposites march across the page: birth and death, planting and plucking up, weeping and laughing, silence and speech, war and peace. This is no abstract philosophy. It is the world as we actually live in it. The farmer in his field knows the planting season and the harvest; the mourner at the graveside knows the season of weeping; the soldier knows the season of war. The Preacher is not telling us to resign ourselves to fate but to recognize the hand of God, who “hath made every thing beautiful in his time” (3:11). And yet, into that beautiful order comes a restless ache: God “hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.” We long to see the whole pattern, and we cannot.
In October, this is the very lesson the year itself teaches. The trees let go their leaves; the fields are plucked up; the days shorten. There is a time to gather, and a time to cast away. But the Preacher does not leave us in melancholy. He says plainly that there is nothing better for a man than “to rejoice, and to do good in his life,” to eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labour, for “it is the gift of God” (3:12-13). Ordinary joys — a meal, a day’s work well done, a quiet evening — are not distractions from the spiritual life. They are gifts from the hand of God, and they are meant to be received with thanksgiving.
But the Preacher sees more, and he does not flinch. Under the sun he sees oppression, and the oppressed have “no comforter” (4:1). He sees a man labouring alone with no end to his toil, no child, no brother, asking, “For whom do I labour?” (4:8). And so he gives us one of the most tender pictures in all of Scripture: “Two are better than one… For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up” (4:9-10). The Preacher, who has questioned nearly everything, does not question this. God has made us for one another. And the “threefold cord” that is not quickly broken (4:12) has long been read by God’s people as a picture of fellowship — two believers bound together, and the Lord Himself as the third strand.
So what do we do with a passage that tells us our times are in God’s hands and that we cannot see the whole design? We do the next thing in front of us, in the season we are actually in. We weep when it is time to weep. We laugh when God gives laughter. We work, we eat, we rest, we hold our friends up when they stumble. And we remember that the God who set eternity in our hearts has entered time Himself — born in a season, crucified in a season, risen in a season — so that we might finally see the end of the work He has made.
Reflection
- What season is God currently assigning to you — weeping or laughing, breaking down or building up — and are you fighting it or receiving it as from His hand?
- Who is the friend who would lift you up if you fell this week, and who is the one you are called to lift up?
Prayer
Father, our times are in Thy hands, and Thou hast made everything beautiful in its time. Teach us to receive this season from Thee, whether it be a time to weep or a time to laugh, to plant or to pluck up. Guard us from the vanity of labouring alone, and give us faithful friends, and be Thou Thyself the third strand in every cord that binds us together. Let us rejoice in the work Thou hast given us and do good while it is called today, until the day when we see the whole of Thy beautiful design face to face. In the name of Jesus, Amen.