Devotional Blog Friday, October 7

Daily Devotional for Friday, October 7 

Your Labor Is Never Vain

People seek purpose in life. No one wants to look back at life and wonder what meaning their life had. We almost universally want to leave a legacy, and hopefully a positive one. 

The words vain and vanity are used over one hundred seventy-five times in God’s Word. The common definition of vain is to be useless. The Hebrew translation of the word literally means vapor, or breath. It can also be translated as meaningless, emptiness or futility. Solomon writing in Ecclesiastes teaches us much about vain lives. This man had it all; God had granted Solomon both great wisdom and great riches. Yet, Solomon looked back on his life and declared it to have been vain, empty and meaningless. What happened here? When Solomon lived for God and God’s purposes, his life had meaning; when he lived for himself and his worldly desires, his life became vain and useless. 

Doing God’s work and following His plan will always ensure that we can look back on a life and see a life lived with purpose. Paul teaches us that here. Life has many things that will distract us from our godly purpose in life; we gladly give into too many of these distractions. Other distractions are unpleasant and unwanted, such as trials and tribulations. These, too, can take our minds off God’s work in our lives. It can be difficult to keep our focus on God’s sometimes unseen purpose when the here and now is so distracting. Yet, God inspired Paul to teach us that His work is never useless or vain. The only question is will we stick with that plan, or let the vanity of life send us sideways?

JUST A THOUGHT: Sometimes the sweet by and by gets obscured by the nasty here and now; Jesus provides the light we need to see past it.

Wally Fry