January 31, 2026 Devo

When I was in college, I worked at the Downtown YMCA in Houston, TX. It was a men’s-only Y at that time and primarily served the businessmen in the downtown area, many of whom were fairly wealthy. One day while I was getting dressed after a workout, there was an attorney I knew who was also getting dressed. He was quite successful. He drove a new Mercedes and wore a $3000 Rolex watch on his wrist and an expensive gold chain around his neck.
But on this particular day, he was sitting on the bench with a faraway look on his face. I called him by name and said, “Are you okay?” He looked at me with a really sad look on his face. Then he said, “Life sucks.” He went on to talk about his failed marriage, his struggle with alcohol, and his basic depression with life. We talked for a while, and then he pulled himself together, thanked me for listening, and left.
I sat there for a minute or two, stunned by our conversation. This man wanted for nothing. He was rich and successful and had everything most people want. But he was more miserable than anyone I knew. For all he had on the outside, he was empty on the inside. He didn’t have God. And that hole inside left him always feeling hungry and lost. He was the poorest rich man I’d ever met.
I thought of him as I read our passage today. If you want to know why people are so mean, it’s because they don’t have God. People without the Lord lead a life of endless frustration. They climb the mountain of success only to find it’s not worth the journey. They fill their lives with “stuff,” but it only leaves them emptier than ever. No matter where they go, they don’t find what they’re looking for. No matter how many people are around them, they are always alone. Isaiah describes them in the saddest way. “They will look up to heaven and down at the earth, but wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair.”
I told you this because I want you to feel what I feel when I think of my friend. Pity. People don’t want to be mean. They just don’t know what to do with the hurt they have inside. People don’t want to be greedy and selfish. They’re just trying to fill a bottomless hole they have inside. So pity them. Pray for them. And seek every opportunity to point them to God. Because when you have God, you have it all. And when you don’t have God, no matter what you do have, you have nothing at all…except “trouble and anguish and dark despair.” That’s God’s Word for you today.