Friday, January 1, 2016
Devotion VIDEO here
For everything there is a season, a time for
every activity under heaven. A time to
be born and a time to die. A time to
plant and a time to harvest. A time to
kill and a time to heal. A time to tear
down and a time to build up. A time to cry
and a time to laugh. A time to grieve
and a time to dance. A time to scatter
stones and a time to gather stones. A
time to embrace and a time to turn away.
A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. What do people really get for
all their hard work? I have seen the
burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart,
but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to
end. So I concluded there is nothing
better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink
and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13(NLT)
A person would have had to be living on the moon to
have not heard the expression, there’s a time for everything. One writer characterized the “seven seasons”
of life this way:
1. Spills of Infancy – Everything goes to the floor as you play the game of
“I drop; you pick up”.
2. Drills of childhood – Spelling drills, multiplication drills, bible drills
- The lessons drilled into your head by your parents and teachers.
3. Thrills of the Teen
Years - The feeling of immortality, roller coaster
rides, dating, and acne.
4. Bills of Adult living
– Work, bills, Marriage, bills, buying a house
bills; car, bills, raising children bills, bills and lots of bills. I asked a friend who had just become a father
for the third time how it feels to be a father of three; he replied, EXPENSIVE!
5. Ills of the Hills - When the excitement of the midlife crisis lands you
in the hospital.
6. The Pills of Over the
Hill - One for arthritis; one for high blood
pressure; one for this and two for that.
7. Wills of Old Age – I will get up, I will get up, No, I will not get up.
Uhmm, can I get some help? I need to get
up![2]
Everyone can identify with those ills, pills and
wills. We laugh, but only
because they are our common experience.
There is as much frustration with being in one stage, knowing that the
next is coming. In fact, we know that is
the case, as verse 11 tells us [God]…has planted eternity in the human
heart.…
We are different from the plants, insects and animals
in that we sense the existence of time and eternity, and the abstractness of
God. Animals and plant life simply
respond to the moment and its environs.
If there is food they eat it and enjoy it; if there are competitors for
the food, they fight for it. They exist
and reproduce without regard to antiquity or posterity. They are the true existentialists, living in
the moment.
Humans are different; we ask the question, why? A three year old can ask that question five
million times from the back seat of the car!
Humans can focus on eternity and we want to know the meaning of life; we
want to know why we are here. We search
for that meaning, and when we cannot know it, unfortunately we manufacture
it.
Our American slogan:
“In God We Trust” is just that – a slogan. Sounds good, but if we only say it, our real trust
is fully leaning on our ingenuity, imagination and technology. It’s never what we say, but rather it’s what
we do which determines where the real stuff of our living takes place.
For You Today
If God wills, you’ve got 366 days this year…that’s a
little over half-a-million minutes.
It would be good to trust God in all of them.
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