Christian Devotional – March 16, 2025

Wisdom Squandered, Day 11

You can’t take it with you. Read Ecclesiastes 5:13-20.

Solomon has been doing a lot of thinking in the last several chapters. We’ve read all the different things that he has tried in order to give his life purpose and meaning. In the last few chapters of this verse, we see him come to a conclusion that it really hasn’t mattered what he’s been doing or trying to accomplish. It’s not really mattered what he’s tried to hoard up for himself. There is nothing he is going to amass on this Earth that he can take with him after he dies.

Solomon is forced to admit that the same state in which we enter the world will be the same state in which we exit it. We had nothing when we came into the world, and we will have nothing when we leave it. This was a very sobering fact for Solomon who had so much and was used to having so much. He had worked hard to gain so many things and had to realize that he would not be able to take any of it with him and none of it would matter after he died. He had to realize his priorities had been off. He had been focused on the wrong things. What about our priorities?

Jesus, in Matthew, talks about storing up treasure in heaven where moth and rest doesn’t destroy and where thieves don’t break in and steal. Where are we amassing our treasure? Are we seeking to create vast hordes of treasure here on earth in the form of money and power and possessions and riches and stuff? Or, do we recognize that those things are temporary and our focus is to be on the eternal? Are we laying up treasure in heaven for our eternal life?

Solomon recognized he had a lifetime of achievement, but that achievement was all temporary and transitory. What will our legacy be? What are we spending our lifetime compiling? How can we focus on the eternal today?

Check out the video devotional here: https://youtu.be/vuPIsRwpjSo