Daily Devotional For Saturday, May 10, 2025
It’s Saturday and the weekend. In 1965, a song was released by a group called The Byrds – Turn, Turn, Turn. It was a song based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. The Bible talks about there is a time under heaven for everything.. A time to be born and a time to die. There is a time to plant and time to reap. There is a time to tear down and a time to build up. This is the point of Ecclesiastes 3:1, “There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every matter under heaven” (NASB).
I believe God chooses specific individuals to live during specific seasons. I believe “in the beginning” God intended that a man named Noah would have the determination to build an ark. I believe God knew David would be watching over his father’s sheep long before anyone imagined there would be an Israel, and Israel would need a king. I believe God looked across the span of time and called our names to stand today for His purposes—and He has given us everything we need to lead godly lives in this season.
We won’t be held accountable for what we would have done had we been Noah’s neighbors or David’s advisors. Our responsibility is this season. What do we do with that? First, let’s invite people to the cross of Jesus Christ because it represents the power of God to redeem and transform a life. Then, let’s be unrelenting, unapologetic ambassadors for Jesus, even when others are silent. There are no insignificant people in God’s plans for humanity. This is our time. Let’s not hide our reality or deny our truth. Let’s stand up for Jesus during our season on earth.
Old Testament scholar Kent Hughes tells this story that is fitting for our text today:
“It was the death of a grand old ballpark. For more than sixty years, the stadium at 21st and Lehigh had been home to the Athletics and later the Phillies. Shibe Park was a Philadelphia institution. Yet by the late 1960s the neighborhood was in decline, and the ballpark, which by then was known as Connie Mack Stadium, had become dilapidated. When the Phillies played their last game there in 1970, fans started tearing the place apart. Already in the first inning the sounds of hammering and sawing could be heard all over the ballpark as vandals tried to steal whatever souvenirs they could pry loose and carry away. “Instead of dying like the graceful, grand place it was,” the newspapers said the next day, “Connie Mack Stadium ended its life literally shrieking in pain from the torments of being torn apart.”
What was left of the stadium was damaged by fire the following year, and by 1976 the field was overgrown with weeds. Finally Mayor Rizzo gave the order for its demolition. It was time to tear the old place down. Yet soon it was time to build again. In 1981 Deliverance Evangelistic Church bought the parcel of land with a vision to serve the city with a gospel-centered community. The church made space for ministry and Christian education, built homes for the elderly, and eventually constructed a huge sanctuary for the worship of God.
These events are beautifully described by historian Bruce Kuklick in his book on Shibe Park and urban Philadelphia. Kuklick borrowed his title from Ecclesiastes 3: To Every Thing a Season.1 In the economy of God, there is a time and a season for everything, including both a time to tear down and a time to build up. While there is a season to play baseball, there is also a season for advancing the ministry of the church—everything in its God-given time” (Source: Kent Huges, Preaching The Word, “Ecclesiastes,” p. 77-78).
Ecclesiastes 3, written by someone scholars call “the preacher,” reminds us that in God’s order of creation after the Fall, everything and everyone is time is a gift. What we do with our time is our responsibility, not God’s. Time does “fly” and “flee.” American Educator Horace Mann said this: “Lost, yesterday, somewhere between Sunrise and Sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever” (Source: quoted in Elizabeth M. Knowles, ed. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 5th edition, p. 493).
This means we all need to be determined to be the person God created us to be. He has a purpose for all of us during this specific season. His timing and plans are perfect. A Biblical understanding of time and its place in the Christian worldview begins with the sovereignty of God. This means God is in control, even of time. Ecclesiastes 3 reminds the reader that there is an orderliness in creation.
"Will you be ready when the time comes? Many people aren’t. When the Vicomte de Turenne was mortally wounded at the Battle of Salzbach in 1675, he wistfully said, “I did not mean to be killed today” (Source: Vicomte de Turenne, quoted in Harold G. Moore and Joseph L. Galloway, We Were Soldiers Once … and Young, p. 321).
“By contrast, one sixty-five-year-old widow from Amsterdam was totally prepared. After the death of her husband in 2005, she carefully planned her own funeral, including the music. One day the next year, when she went to pay her respects where her husband was buried, she lay down and died right next to the family grave, perhaps of a heart attack. The woman’s name was already inscribed on the headstone, and her will was found inside her handbag” (Source: This story was reported by Reuters on November 1, 200)6.
Assignment: With the time you have, (1) First, wait for God’s timing. See Psalm 34:1. (2) Live your whole life knowing that there is a time for you to die. See Hebrews 9:28-28. (3) Make sure of whatever time you have left. See Ephesians 5:16. If you knew that one week from today, you were going to die, how would you use your time? Start now because you have no way of knowing when death will come knocking on your door.
Scripture To Meditate On: Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without the possibility that mankind will find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.”
Prayer To Pray: “Heavenly Father, my presence here is ordained by You, and I want to be faithful to You during all my days. Give me boldness to invite others to come to Jesus at the foot of the cross. Give me courage to speak for You, even when others remain silent. Lord, let me maximize all the time You have given me right up to my death for Your glory I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”
I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly