Ecclesiastes 3:1-22
A Time for Everything
1 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.
16 And I saw something else under the sun:
In the place of judgment—wickedness was there,
in the place of justice—wickedness was there.
17 I said to myself,
“God will bring into judgment
both the righteous and the wicked,
for there will be a time for every activity,
a time to judge every deed.”
18 I also said to myself, “As for humans, God tests them so that they may see that they are like the animals. 19 Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless. 20 All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. 21 Who knows if the human spirit rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?”
22 So I saw that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their work, because that is their lot. For who can bring them to see what will happen after them?
Psalm 90:12
Time Passes
12 Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Solomon writes that there is a time for everything and a season for everything under the sun...And even though there is a time for everything, somethings we want to say, do not get said...And somethings we want to do, do not get done...But time passes so quickly...We often say time flies by...Or that time goes by in a blink...A child grows up and graduates, and we say -where did the time go...We look in the mirror and are surprised by this gradual move of the second by seconds in our own lives...Time somehow seems to fool us, and not in a slow way...There is something about time seemingly going by so quickly, especially as we age...Our time is transient on earth...And though we enjoy some, if not many of the things on earth, there is something else we feel in our souls about earth and its time...As one reads through the Book of Ecclesiastes, I can feel that Solomon feels we are destined to be with our Father in heaven...Earth is only temporary for us...We are so often surprised by time, even though we know that time will pass and we will be one day older tomorrow, and ten years older in ten years...The time we have on earth seems so short...Time after time, we are surprised by time and its passing us by so quickly...
But time as it passes by seems a mystery to us...And that mystery, for me, is in how eternal time happens...And the eternal time is God...God is in eternity...
C. S. Lewis wrote in a letter about time to Sheldon Vanauken...Lewis said, "A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted....But what does the existence of the wish suggest?...At one time I was much impressed by Arnold's line 'Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.'...But surely tho' it doesn't prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food!...i.e....if we were a species that didn't normally eat, weren't designed to eat, would we feel hungry?...You say the materialist universe is 'ugly.'...I wonder how you discovered that!...If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don't feel at home there?...Do fish complain of the sea for being wet?...Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always, or would not always be, purely aquatic creatures?...Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time....('How time flies!...Fancy John being grown-up and married!...I can hardly believe it!')...In heaven's name, why?...Unless, indeed, there is something about us that is not temporal."...
Something about us is eternal...Something about us is Spiritual...The soul and Holy Spirit are in us and eternal...We get hungry, so we know we need our daily bread...We know that the world is an ugly place, and that a heaven awaits...And eternal place awaits us...The soul and Spirit are eternal, and we somehow see this and feel this in our lives when we see children grow up quickly or look in the mirror and ask, where did this time or my time go...As Moses tells us in his Psalm, we must learn to know the importance of our days, the we gain a heart of wisdom of things and the eternal...