{"id":7184,"date":"2020-11-03T18:35:19","date_gmt":"2020-11-04T00:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nazareneblogs.org\/pastorscott\/?p=5290"},"modified":"2020-11-03T18:35:19","modified_gmt":"2020-11-04T00:35:19","slug":"devotional-on-ecclesiastes-28","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/devotional-on-ecclesiastes-28\/","title":{"rendered":"Devotional on Ecclesiastes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure style=\"width: 400px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-aUm7ScNp9-M\/X6Cc0eMZ5ZI\/AAAAAAABHRY\/IL0LJsfldoIvQ_DdpUU5xfP0SUCMdVpzgCPcBGAsYHg\/s400\/09georgetown.jpg\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" class=\"size-large\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">2003 &#8211; Georgetown, Colorado<\/figcaption><\/figure><br \/>\nGood people and good things<br \/>\nEcclesiastes 8: I&#8217;m still convinced that the good life is reserved for the person who fears God&#8230;and that the evil person will not experience the &#8220;good&#8221; life.<br \/>\nThe conventional wisdom of Solomon&#8217;s day (and it is often still conventional wisdom today) is that bad people have bad things happen to them and good people have good things happen to them.  In his wisdom Solomon sees considerable evidence that this approach isn&#8217;t true.  He sees wicked people live pretty nice lives and he even attends some funerals in which it appears that the person &#8220;got away with it&#8221; &#8212; living an evil life yet having everything a person could ask for right to the very end.  He has plenty of evidence that the common belief of &#8220;bad gets bad and good gets good&#8221; doesn\u2019t really work.  Still, though, he can&#8217;t quite give up on it.  While he can&#8217;t prove that it\u2019s true, he can&#8217;t shake the belief that there\u2019s some truth in this philosophy.  He reports, &#8220;I&#8217;m still convinced&#8230;.&#8221;  Today, I think Solomon is right to hang on to this belief.  It doesn&#8217;t play out as he thought it would but I agree with him that serving God has great advantages.  It isn&#8217;t that those who trust God have more money and better health but in the intangibles of life there are riches for God&#8217;s people.  There\u2019s wealth in going to sleep at night knowing that no matter what tomorrow brings things will be okay.  There\u2019s wealth in being at peace with God and there\u2019s wealth in knowing one is a child of the King.  I believe the conventional wisdom is both right and wrong.  It\u2019s right in its belief that good things happen to good people.  It\u2019s wrong in having such a narrow and material view of just what those good things are.<br \/>\nTake Away: In the intangibles of life there are riches for God&#8217;s people.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Good people and good things Ecclesiastes 8: I&#8217;m still convinced that the good life is reserved for the person who fears God&#8230;and that the evil person will not experience the &#8220;good&#8221; life. The conventional wisdom of Solomon&#8217;s day (and it is often still conventional wisdom today) is that bad people have bad things happen to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1490,7],"tags":[106,122,1146],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7184"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14879,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7184\/revisions\/14879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/localhost\/pastorscott\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}