Encouragement for Your Week: June 1-7
This Week’s Verse
For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven.
— Ecclesiastes 3:1 (ESV)
Devotion
Ecclesiastes is part of the Bible's wisdom literature, along with Job, Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Songs. These books are written to help people understand important truths about life. In this week’s verse, King Solomon, the author of Ecclesiastes, shares an important insight: in God’s world, everything has its time.
If you like golden oldies, you might recognize this idea from the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” made popular by The Byrds in 1965. Because of that, it’s easy to overlook the deeper meaning. What Solomon is really saying is that nothing in this world lasts forever. Everything has a moment, a season. Then, time moves on, and something new takes its place.
Solomon gives several examples:
“There’s a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pull up what was planted, a time to kill and a time to heal” (Ecclesiastes 3:2–3).
Because life is always changing, Solomon warns us not to place all our hope or identity in any one thing. If we do, we’ll be disappointed. What seems all-important now will eventually pass, and we’ll be left wondering why we depended so much on it.
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, Solomon reminds us, “God has made everything beautiful in its own time.” That means each season of life has value, but none of them are permanent. If we try to hold on too tightly to any one moment or stage of life, we might miss what God is doing overall.
So what should we focus on? Solomon says the real purpose of life is to fear God (Ecclesiastes 3:14). In this context, “fear” means to respect, trust, and honor God above all else. Everything else comes and goes, but God remains constant.
In the end, our job is to live each season faithfully—to ask what God wants us to learn or do in each moment, and to trust Him as life moves forward.
This Week’s Challenge
Take a moment to identify the season of life you're currently in and take one intentional action this week to trust and honor God in it.