Sunday 17 Jun 2012

Sunday Reading: Ecclesiastes 6:1-4

Key Verse: Ecclesiastes 6:3
3  If a man beget an hundred children, and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he.

Devotion:
Covetousness is one of those things that we all think we can avoid but something that creeps up and destroys so many people’s lives. It is something that is not tangible for some people to even imagine because they have never been placed in a position where they wanted something that much. These verses give us a way of thinking about things in a different way; take verse 2 which makes us think about being given all our desires only for them to be enjoyed by someone else instead of us. We don’t normally come up against things like that because when we do have a desire for something we tend to try to get our own way so that we can have what we do desire – in other words we try to get what we want by changing the circumstances or forcing the outcome.

It does not matter that we are able to obtain, receive or accept all the desires of our hearts without our souls being filled with good because we will still be wanting more. That is, sadly, one of the things we see in many people who do get many of their wishes come true – they start to want more because they begin to find out that what they wanted does not actually fulfil their desires. That is the difference between wanting things and needing things.

God is the one that knows what we do want, not just to make us happy but also to fulfil our needs. He is the one who knows what we do need in order for us to be happy but we are the ones who think we know. When we then reach out for the things that we think we need we get to find out whether they are what we need that hard way; through (sometimes) bitter experience.

God is the one who knows how we tick and what we require within our minds and spirits in order to be happy and fulfilled. If we seek what makes us happy in monetary terms or other physical ways then we are going to fall very short of gaining what we seek with our souls. The writer puts it well saying that if we seek things in vain be it through going after physical gain or other covetous paths we are going to find nothing but darkness instead of the light we seek. The problem is that others will see us reaching those physical goals and think that we are getting what we need rather than just what we seek – the two being very different!

Points to Ponder:
Do you seek your wants and desires?

Do you allow God to guide your desires?