The Upper Room Devotional for 31st August 2023, Thursday
The Upper Room Devotional for 31st August 2023, Thursday Message by Rachael Katharine Elliott (Illinois, USA)
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TOPIC: A Time for Everything
TODAY’S READING
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. – Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NRSVUE)
I walked around the cornfields near my home. They were empty, barren, void of any life. The wind was the only sound in the low sloping hills. I could relate to those empty fields. I was between jobs, living with my parents, and waiting for someone, anyone, to respond to my job inquiries. I felt like a failure. What had I done by quitting my teaching job and moving back home after three years abroad? Had I misheard God’s guiding voice? Had I done the wrong thing? Like the cornfields not yet planted, I was empty.
As I gazed at the field, I remembered a conversation I had with a farmer years ago. We stood at the edge of an empty field like this one, and I asked if he would be planting soon. “Not yet,” he said. “We have to wait for the right time, or nothing will grow.” As I stood now alone by the cornfield, I realized that “empty” was just what I needed to be in that moment. I wanted job offers, but maybe, like the field, I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t time. Maybe if the offers came too soon, nothing would grow in my life.
It’s easy to think of a time of waiting as a time that is wasted. But God, like the farmer, knows there is a time for everything. As the empty field waits for the farmer, we can wait for God’s timing.
TODAY’S PRAYER
All-knowing God, give us the strength to wait even when the world seems to tell us we shouldn’t. Give us your peace when we can’t see the next step to take. Amen.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
I will wait on God’s timing.
PRAYER FOCUS
To wait patiently for God’s timing
The Upper Room Devotional for 31st August 2023 Message, is a daily devotional magazine published in more than 30 languages and 100 countries around the world. The daily meditations are written by readers of the magazine and others interested in sharing their faith experiences through writing—both laity and clergy, published authors and new writers. Read More.
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