Friday Reading: Ecclesiastes 7:21-22
Key Verse: Ecclesiastes 7:22
22 For also your own heart knows that you yourself have also cursed others many times.
Devotion:
Is it all about taking advice from others and giving it to your friends? Certainly not! No matter where we are we are always going to hear things from others around us. If we are the nosey type then we may well listen in to the conversations going on around us and when we do we should not be surprised if we eventually hear someone talking about us! What we may hear from others as they talk about us may well not please us as much as we would like to believe. None of us go around thinking about how bad others think we are – if we did we would get depressed quite quickly!
The excellent advice we hear here today is that we should not go round snooping in on other peoples conversations because we may well be confronted by people talking about us and saying things that they do not want us to hear! It only takes a couple of words to make us realise just how bad we can be hurt by what others are saying about us.
If we then turn that round and think of all the times that we have said something bad about someone else then we will start to realise just how much we can hurt others. “But they can’t hear us” I can hear you shouting. How do you know? How do you know they have not heard you and have gone away quietly being totally distraught by what you have just said? Ok so it is not very likely if they are on the other side of the world, but what if someone was on the phone to them and they overheard what you just said out loud? We can never be certain whether people will get to hear what we have said so the only good advice would be not to go there in the first place! Don’t gossip. Don’t put others down. Don’t make it difficult...
Points to Ponder:
Do you get hurt by what others say?
Have you thought about what you say about God?