A Time for Everything

We began reading Ecclesiastes last week. The kids thought it was amusing how many times we read the words, “Meaningless! Meaningless! All is meaningless!” They quickly learned to add the refrain, “This, too, is a chasing after the wind.”

As we read through Ecclesiastes, we have been talking about how everything is meaningless if you don’t have the Lord. “All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return,” Ecclesiastes 3:20.

I have been worried about our country’s financial situation, as well as the upcoming presidential election. Our reading in Ecclesiastes has been a good reminder to me that “there is nothing new under the sun,” Ecclesiastes 1:9. Every generation since the world began has faced its share of trials, folly and sin.

As Americans, we are often prideful enough to think our nation is immune to the ills which have plagued other countries throughout history. We forget that, “He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them,” Job 12:23.

Ecclesiastes also tells us that, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,” Ecclesiastes 3:1

I want my time to be one of laughter, not of weeping….a time to dance, and not to mourn. I want to plant. I want to build. Yet perhaps we are destined to uproot and tear down.

I don’t say this to make a prediction, but just to face the reality that only God knows what tomorrow will bring. Every time under heaven comes from His sovereign, loving hand.

So while I pray for the worst to be averted, I do so knowing that it may be God’s choice to judge rather than to bless.

Either way, we need to “number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom,” Psalm 90:12. Let us not place our trust in the treasure that moth and rust destroy, nor despair as ‘kings’ rise and fall.

This world is not our home. We are receiving a kingdom which can’t be shaken.