Monday, October 20, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Ecclesiastes 1-2
- Secondary Reading: Psalms 121
Key Verse
Ecclesiastes 2:5 — “I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kind of fruits:”
Devotional Thought
The Preacher of Ecclesiastes is Solomon, the son of David, king in Jerusalem—the man who asked God for wisdom and received it in abundance. Yet here he sits, surveying everything he has built and acquired, and his verdict lands like a hammer: vanity of vanities, all is vanity. He has not merely dabbled in pleasure; he has exhausted it. He built houses and planted vineyards, made gardens and orchards, dug pools of water, gathered silver and gold and the treasure of kings, surrounded himself with singers and instruments of every sort. Whatever his eyes desired, he withheld not from his heart. And when he turned to look on all his hands had wrought, he found no profit under the sun—only vexation of spirit. Even wisdom, which he prized above folly as light excels darkness, offered no exemption, for the wise man dies as the fool, and neither is remembered for long.
This is the October word we need, as the year itself begins to die around us. The leaves fall, the light shortens, the garden withers to stalk and seed. Creation preaches Solomon’s sermon without a single word: one generation passes, another comes, the sun rises and goes down, the rivers run to the sea and are not full. Nothing under the sun is truly new, and nothing under the sun can satisfy a soul made for more than the sun. We know this in our bones. The promotion we labored for, the house we furnished, the praise we collected—how quickly they turn to ash in the mouth. Solomon is not cynical; he is honest. He is telling us that a life measured by what is under the sun will always come up empty, because the eye is never satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing.
Yet notice where Solomon lands in chapter two. He does not end in despair. He says there is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink and enjoy good in his labor—and then adds the crucial phrase: this also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. The ordinary gifts of daily bread, honest work, and joy are not vanity when received from God’s hand. The problem was never the gift; it was the grasping. And so the psalmist lifts our eyes higher than the hills: “My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth.” The Keeper who neither slumbers nor sleeps is the answer to the Preacher’s ache. What Solomon sought under the sun, Psalm 121 finds above it.
So today, as the shadows lengthen and the year wanes, let the Preacher’s honesty free you from the tyranny of striving after wind. And let the psalmist’s confidence steady you: the LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.
Reflection
- Where in your life are you still striving “under the sun”—working for a satisfaction that only the God who made heaven and earth can give?
- Solomon received his daily bread, labor, and joy as from the hand of God. How would this day look different if you received your ordinary gifts that way?
Prayer
Lord, we confess that we have chased the wind. We have built and gathered and labored as though our souls could be filled by things under the sun, and we have found them vanity and vexation of spirit. Teach us the honesty of the Preacher and the hope of the psalmist. Give us grace to receive our daily bread, our work, and our small joys as gifts from Thy hand, and to lift our eyes above the hills to Thee, our Keeper, who neither slumbers nor sleeps. Preserve our going out and our coming in, from this time forth and even for evermore. Amen.
Psalm Verse
Psalms 121:1 — “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.”