Thursday, October 23, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Ecclesiastes 6-7
Key Verse
Ecclesiastes 7:9 — “Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.”
Devotional Thought
Solomon, the Preacher, has tasted everything the world offers and found the cup bitter at the bottom. In Ecclesiastes 6 he paints a portrait that ought to stop us cold: a man to whom God has given riches, wealth, and honour, who lacks nothing his soul desires, and yet cannot eat of it. A stranger consumes his portion. Solomon calls this an evil disease. Then he turns darker still, imagining a man with a hundred children and years beyond counting, whose soul is never filled with good and who receives no burial. Better, he says, the child who never drew breath. The Preacher is not morbid; he is honest. He has watched appetite outlive satisfaction, and he will not pretend otherwise. Even the wise man and the fool end in the same place.
Then chapter seven turns a corner. “A good name is better than precious ointment; and the day of death than the day of one’s birth.” This is strange arithmetic to modern ears. We celebrate birthdays and avoid funerals; Solomon reverses it. Why? Because the house of mourning teaches what the house of feasting cannot. Standing beside a casket, the living “lay it to his heart.” Sorrow, he says, makes the heart better. The rebuke of a wise friend is worth more than the song of fools, which crackles like thorns under a pot—bright for a moment, gone, and good for nothing. In late October, when the leaves fall and the year itself seems to be dying, the season preaches the same sermon Solomon preached: consider your end, and the consideration will make you wise.
But Solomon is no mere gloom-merchant. “In the day of prosperity be joyful, but in the day of adversity consider: God also hath set the one over against the other.” Joy and sorrow are both from the same hand, and neither lasts forever. He warns against extremes—not righteous overmuch, not wicked overmuch—and presses toward the fear of God, which is the one path that comes forth from them all. He confesses that wisdom itself eluded him: “I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me.” Here is a king with everything, admitting he could not find out the meaning of his own life. That honesty is itself a gift.
And yet he found one thing: “God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” The crookedness we see is not God’s doing. We were made straight and wandered. That is why the Preacher’s realism does not end in despair—it ends in reverence. We cannot straighten what God has made crooked, but we can fear Him, receive each day as from His hand, and let the house of mourning teach us what the house of mirth never will. Wisdom is a defence, Solomon says, and it gives life to those who have it. Not the life of endless feasting, but the quiet life of a soul that has stopped contending with the One mightier than itself.
Reflection
- Solomon says the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, while the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. Where is your heart most at home this week—and what would it look like to let sorrow teach you rather than merely disturb you?
- The Preacher confesses that wisdom was “far off” and that he could not find it out on his own. Where are you tempted to demand answers from God rather than to fear Him and trust what He has revealed?
Prayer
Lord, You have set prosperity and adversity over against each other, and we confess that we often love the one and resent the other. Teach us to number our days, to sit in the house of mourning and let it make our hearts better. Keep us from the crackling laughter of fools and from the pride that thinks it can straighten what You have made crooked. Give us a good name, patience in spirit, and a reverent fear of You. We cannot find out Your works, but we can trust the One who made us upright and who redeems what we have twisted. In Christ, Amen.