Saturday, October 25, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Ecclesiastes 9-10
Key Verse
Ecclesiastes 10:2 — “A wise man’s heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s heart at his left.”
Devotional Thought
The Preacher of Ecclesiastes has been watching the world long enough to lose his illusions. In chapter nine he looks at the righteous and the wise, whose works are in the hand of God, and notices that no man can tell love from hatred by what lies before him. The same event overtakes them all: the good and the clean, the man who sacrifices and the man who does not. A living dog, he says, is better than a dead lion—not a flattering word, but an honest one. The dead know nothing; their love and hatred and envy have perished with them. So the Preacher turns to the living and gives them a strange, tender commission: eat your bread with joy, drink your wine with a merry heart, let your garments be always white, live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest. Work with your might, he urges, for there is no work in the grave. And then he tells of a little city, besieged by a great king, delivered by a poor wise man whom nobody afterward remembered. Wisdom saved the city; the wise man was forgotten. That is the world under the sun.
October is a good month for this kind of honesty. The leaves are falling, the light is thinning, and the year itself preaches what Ecclesiastes preaches: time and chance happen to us all. The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. We know this. We have watched the swift stumble and the strong fall. But the Preacher does not leave us in despair. He leaves us at the table. Eat your bread with joy. That is not fatalism; it is faith in the Giver. God now accepteth thy works—not because they are flawless, but because they are offered to Him in the brief daylight we are given.
Chapter ten adds a warning the autumn wind carries well: dead flies cause the ointment to stink. A little folly ruins a reputation for wisdom and honor. One sinner destroyeth much good. The Preacher has seen folly set in great dignity while princes walk as servants, and he knows that sloth lets the roof drop through. So he counsels wisdom in the small things—sharpening the blunt iron, yielding to a ruler’s anger, guarding the tongue, and not cursing the king even in the bedchamber, for a bird of the air shall carry the voice. Wisdom is profitable to direct. It is not glamorous, but it keeps the house standing.
What, then, shall we do with a Saturday in late October? We shall do what the Preacher says. We shall work with our might while it is day. We shall eat with joy and love the people God has given us, not because the days are endless, but because they are not. And we shall remember the poor wise man whom the city forgot—and take heart that our labor is not ultimately remembered by men, but held in the hand of God, who forgets nothing.
Reflection
- The Preacher says the same event comes to the righteous and the wicked alike—does that unsettle your sense of fairness, or free you to trust your works to God’s hand rather than to outcomes?
- Where in your life has a “little folly”—a dead fly in the ointment—spoiled something good, and what would wisdom in that small place look like today?
Prayer
Lord, Thou hast set our works in Thy hand, and Thou knowest what we cannot know—what this day holds, and how long our daylight lasts. Teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Give us joy at our own tables, faithfulness in our labors, and love for the people Thou hast given us. Keep us from the folly that spoils good ointment, and from the sloth that lets the house fall. Though we be forgotten by men, remember us, O God, for we rest in Thee, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.