DAILY BIBLE DEVOTION

NOTHING IS NEW

Ecclesiastes is a fun book to read.

About the only thing people

recognize is in chapter three

where we read about a season for

everything - a time to live, a time

to die, etc. - but we have much to

learn from this book. I'm sure you

have heard the phrase, "Those who

don't learn from history are

doomed to repeat it." This brief

passage expresses the same idea.

Just like the Israelites made the

same mistakes over and over

again, so do we. Yes, there are

inventions today that we take for

granted today that would never

have entered into the imagination

of peoples of earlier times, but they

repeated the cycle of obeying God,

enjoying prosperity, forgetting

about God, doing their own thing,

falling into the hands of the

enemy, begging God for

forgiveness, promising to do

better, being forgiven by God and

obeying - for a while, and so it

went. How many times do we

promise God that we will do better.

we will treat people better, we will

be more honest in our dealings

with others, work better with our

communities for justice - if God

will just give us what we need now.

How long did the promise last once

Our prayers were answered? We

fall into the same cycle as the

Israelites, we do the right thing or

say the promised prayers, or

whatever we promised for a while

and then fall into bad habits and

wonder what went wrong.

Ecclesiastes is a short book, take

some time and read it through.

There's a lot to learn here.

Prayer

Lord, we fall into patterns and

can't seem to remember the

problems we get ourselves into

when we don't follow you. Help us

to do better to learn from our

mistakes. Amen.