Death is coming for all of us. In Terry Pratchett's fantasy novels the character Death has an hourglass on his shelf for each and every living person. As the last grains of sand fall through the hourglass he appears at the last moment to do his job and to end the person's life. Each and every person has an hourglass. Some hourglasses run for a short amount of time, some run for a very long amount of time, but every hourglass runs out.
We too have an hourglass that is running out. One day all the sand of our lives will eventually run through and we will die. There is nothing we can do to stop it or to prolong it, death is coming for all of us.
This is Solomon's point here in Ecclesiastes. Every person will die. Solomon points out that this is not merely the doing of man but of God. God has made all of us, men and women, so that we will one day die. Just like the animals and the plants and all other living things we will one day die and return to dust.
Genesis 3 records the reason behind this sombre pronouncement. Read back over the first 3 chapters if you don't know the story. In brief, God created the world and everything in it. God created all things so that they were very good. He made man in His own image and set Him over creation to tend it and keep it. God's only stipulation was that man was not to eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Mankind broke this one stipulation which God had made and as a result God pronounced punishments and cast man out of the perfect garden forever.
We read one of these punishments in verses 18-19: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return from the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return."
Because of sin we will all one day die and be judged by God. We cannot avoid death, it is coming for all of us, but we can prepare ourselves to face His judgment. How do we do this? Our only hope is in Jesus Christ, the one who lived a perfect life on our behalf and who suffered and died to take the penalty for our sin. Only in Him can we have hope in the light of our coming death.
Prayer: Write down your prayer points in the space provided. Use today's reading to help you get ideas.
Adoration:
Confession:
Thanks:
Supplication:
- Praise God that He has provided an answer to the problem of death through Jesus Christ. Pray that He would strengthen and encourage your faith in Him and that he would give you a passion to share Him with all those in the world who are facing death without Him. Pray that He would give you many opportunities to share.
- Pray for the other churches in your presbytery. Pray that God would build up the ministers, elders and committee of management in each church. Pray that each and every congregation would be filled with a passion to share Him with others and that the gospel would be proclaimed loudly and clearly across Queensland, Australia and even the world.
My Additional Prayer Points.
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