Invite you to take your Bible and turn to Ecclesiastes chapter three. You may want to put a marker in there, because we’ll be in it for a few weeks. Want to begin a several sermon exposition of this whole chapter. The message I’ve entitled It’s About Time, and how appropriate as we find ourselves just inside the door of a new year. What’s God’s view of what’s going to happen in 2011? Well, verse one of chapter three of the book of Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die, a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted, a time to kill, and a time to heal, a time to break down, and a time to build up, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”
“A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to gain, a time to lose, a time to keep, and a time to throw away, a time to tear, and a time to sew, a time to keep silent, and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time of war, and a time of peace. What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
That will suffice for today. In his biography of General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, Harold Begbie describes the moment when the old general learns from his son Bramwell that he’s about to go blind. He’s 83 years of age. It takes a moment or two for the shock of the news to settle in. The thought of not seeing his son’s face again, at least in this life, tears at the old man’s heart. But then the old soldier of the cross reaches out and takes his son’s hand, and with a calmness of voice, he says, “God knows best.”
Then, after a further moment of pause and reflection, General Booth says this, “Bramwell, I have done what I could for God, and the people with my eyes. Now I shall do what I can for God and the people without my eyes.” Striking, isn’t it? In those words, General William Booth of the Salvation Army expresses a faith-filled recognition that there’s a time and a season for everything. There’s a time to be with your eyes, and there’s a time to be without your eyes. There’s a hidden hand managing the times that we find ourselves in, and the times we find ourselves going through. That life changes, and we must change with it, because God knows best. Sight gives way to blindness, strength gives way to weakness. Health gives way to sickness, and ultimately life gives way to death. There’s a time to be born, and there’s a time to die.
Things don’t stay the same, my friends. In fact, someone has said that, “Time is a seamstress that specializes in alterations.” Have you found that to be true? And yet standing behind that fact, that things are constantly changing, that we find ourselves shuttled between this experience and that experience, some good, some bad, some to our liking, some not to our liking, standing behind that reality, the Bible wants us to know that God has a given purpose, and a given time for all of the things we go through.
The psalmist says in Psalm 37 verse 23, that, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord.” Ephesians chapter one and verse 11 remind us that God is constantly working out all things after the council of his own sovereign and free will, and that’s certainly a Solomon’s perspective. This is the point that Solomon wants to get across here in the passage before us in Ecclesiastes chapter three. This section opens with a confession. Yes, a celebration of the fact that God is the maker, and master of every moment. That God has a plan. Listen to me, inside this doorstep of 2011, I don’t know what’s going through your mind this morning, but here’s a God thought. God has a plan that embraces every man, every woman, every child and all their actions.
Ecclesiastes three verse one, “To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” And the great thing about this plan is that it’s fitting, it’s good, and according to verse 11, it’s beautiful. Look at what we read in Ecclesiastes three verse 11. “God has made everything beautiful in its time.” Time is a divine tapestry that God is weaving together intricately, and exquisitely, and that means, this is good, the future is not to be feared, and the present is not to be fought, because where you are and what you’re going through has been appointed, and ordered. That’s what we’re going to be taught here.
Now, that should come as a bit of a surprise, because generally speaking, up until this point in the book, Solomon has been pretty down on life, and so one would expect them to be down on time, because what is life but a series of days and years? One would expect him to look at the clock, and all that it brings, and see it simply as another menacing aspect of life, because in its essence, time is mystifying. In its brevity, time is humbling. In its demands, time is paralyzing. In its tyranny, time mocks us, and at its end, time scares us.
I think we would all identify with the words of William Shakespeare, “I wasted time, now time doth waste me.” How true that is. And yet Solomon doesn’t talk in depressed tones. Solomon doesn’t talk about the maddening, menacing nature of time, and I’ll tell you why, because I think he’s beginning in chapter three where he left off in chapter two. He’s picking up the threads. He’s already sewn into the fabric of this book. Look at verse 24 of chapter two. “Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw as from the hand of God.”
Up until this point, Solomon has hardly mentioned God, but all of a sudden there’s a break in the clouds, and he has us identifying a hand that’s reaching down into life, a hand that gives life, and orders life, and blesses life. And this is the theme he’s picking up here, and expanding in chapter three, because look at verse 12, “I know that nothing is better.” Same language. “I know that nothing is better for them that is mankind than to rejoice and do good in their lives, that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of his labor. It is the gift of God.” So, there’s a turning in Solomon’s thinking here. We’re leaving the object pessimism of chapters one and two behind, to a large degree, although he’ll pick that up again as we go along.
But now he has us thinking about the God above the sun, and he wants us to view life, and value life as from his hand, and as a gift. And then he begins therefore to talk about time, and how time is in God’s hands, and our days are ordered by Him, and sent by Him. That’s what he’s picking up here. This is a move away from humanism to theism, from skepticism to faith. Now also, if we put it in the wider context of the book, it’s no wonder that we would have a large section on the issue of time, because if you’re writing a book about life, does life have its meaning, and significance, and purpose and value, then you better put some value on the tick of the clock. Does time have any value? What’s its purpose? What’s its place?
And so Solomon addresses this. The word time appears here multiple, multiple times in this passage. Life can never be profitable unless time has value. There can be no purpose to life if there is no point to time. And so, you and I are going to just work our way probably for three Sundays, or even four through this passage, and we’re going to see that God has appointed an appropriate time for everything, that life is not a meaningless cycle, or circle of events. Forget the Lion King, and the circle of life. That’s just a new age, pantheism, Hinduism, Buddhism. It’s not a Christian view on life. Life’s not a circle, meaningless, endless. Life is linear. There’s a beginning point, and an end point, and with every tick of the clock, God is unfolding His purpose for every season and every day.
Solomon will get that across, and I hope to drive it home, and batter it home this morning, because behind time is the God of time. Look at what we read here. There’s a time, a purpose for everything under heaven, and yet according to verse 11, God makes it all beautiful. God has a plan. I don’t know if you’re still scratching your head wondering what you’re going to do with 2011, but I’ll tell you what, God knows exactly what He’s going to do, and he might let you know what He’s going to do with you, but maybe not. Just going to have to trust Him and take what comes, because that’s His prerogative. I just want to remind you, God’s sovereign. God can do whatever He wants. He’s in heaven. Psalm 115 verse three, and He does whatever he wants.
Now, that shouldn’t scare us. I’ll get to that in a moment, but it’s just a fact. And here’s what you and I need to grasp, that whatever God does, according to verse 14, nothing can be added to it or taken from it, and that’s why we need to fear before Him. We need to leave things in God’s hands. Stop taking them out of His hands, stop taking them into our own hands. Man’s lot is to enjoy what God has ordered, and receive the portion that God appoints.
Now, I’m going to jump ahead of myself here, but I like to make pastoral, practical applications in my expositions and exegesis. What does this mean right now? And we’ll get to this more fully before we’re done. It requires submission. You’re just going to have to submit to that reality. You’re not God, you never will be, regardless of what Shirley MacLean tells you. You know what? There is one God, and He orders life, and the times that we find ourselves in, and you and I need to recognize that, and we need to adjust our attitude to that. You can bemoan the lot in life that you find yourself in all day long, and you can make other people miserable with you, but that won’t change a thing, and since you can’t change that, you must change in your attitude towards that, and the God who orders it. It’s imperative that you and I realize that fact.
Charles Swindoll says this, I came across this in a book I just finished this week on the history of Dallas Theological Seminary, Charles pastored effectively here in our community just in Fullerton, and he went on to be the president of Dallas Seminary and Pastor of Stonebriar Church in Texas. He says this, “The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitudes on life. Attitude to me is more important than facts. We cannot change our past. We cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is attitude. I’m convinced that life is 10% what happens to me, 90% how I react to what happens to me.”
That’s true, and Solomon would have us realize that. That God’s ways are eternal, perfect, full, immutable, and what God’s going to do in our life and around our life, you can’t add to it, or take away from it, and wake up to that reality, and embrace it with joy, because, “Where we cannot trace the hand of God, we can trust the heart of God,” says Spurgeon. So, let’s look at this passage. If you’ve got your bulletin, we’re going to look at it from three perspectives, just beginning to look at the first heading this morning, the blending of time, verses one through eight, the sending of time verses nine through 15, and the ending of time, verses 16 through 22.
Let’s begin to look at verses one through eight, what I call the blending of time. This section begins with a bold declaration that whatever comes in life, God has purposed and planned it. God has left nothing to chance. There’s something to what is happening in every season in our life. There’s a purpose to everything under the sun, everything in nature and life is fixed, and under a divinely designed scheme, there is a marked orderliness to life. There is a marked purpose to history, and Solomon wants us to see that the genesis of life is in the divine will, that which God has appointed.
Life may be a series of contradictions to us, a series of contrasts to us. It may be on a given day a jumbled mess to us, but from where God sits, there is a time and a season to it all, and a purpose behind it, and beneath it. That’s why Corrie ten Boom so rightly said, “There’s no panic in heaven, only plans.” Glad of that, aren’t you? So let’s look at verse one quickly and then begin to look at the succeeding verses. Note that every activity, everything, every willful action of man has its proper time, and its proper duration. There’s a time, and there’s a season mentioned in this passage. I think the word time means point in time. There’s a point at which something begins, maybe birth, it may be death, it may be loss, it may begin, but there’ll become a point in time where something will happen, and then there’ll be a season to that, and there’ll be a duration to that.
And we’re to be reminded of the fact that there’s purpose behind it. There’s a sovereign hand superintending it all. The mundane, momentary multitudinous details of our lives is part of a bigger scheme that can’t fit into our tiny little pea brains, but by faith we take it, that in the end everything is made beautiful. That means that there’s no throwaway moments, no unimportant, wasted days, no cold facts, no meaningless events in the life of a Christian. That’s why we can throw back the curtains in the morning and quote Psalm 118 verse 24. “This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice, and be glad in it.” Because whatever happens during the time, and duration of this day, and the day to follow it, and the week that makes it up, there’s a purpose behind it, and God will make it all beautiful in his time. There’s a tapestry being woven across the loom of history, and a sovereign hand that does it.
Now, what follows that fact? And you got to bare that in mind. That’s the umbrella under which the rest of these verses find themselves. What follows is a beautiful poetic description of life in all its variableness, and it’s important that you and I see that what we have here in verses two through eight is a blending of what God sends our way. Grammatically, what we have here is a merismus in the Hebrew grammar, because you’ll see this is a poem. There’s design to the structure of this, and that’s important. This is a linguistic device that’s used to set opposites in opposition to each other. It’s a way of expressing something, and everything that happens beyond it and between it. That’s why we talk about north and south, and we talk about heaven and hell, and everything in between, and that’s what you have here.
Listen to Ian Provan in his commentary on Ecclesiastes, “The totality of things is also implied by the fact that our list of extremes compromises 28 items, and 14 pairs, multiples of seven, the numbers symbolizing completion.” And we’ll go no further than that, but just notice there’s a beautiful design to this poem, and it’s purposeful in that it’s kind of summarizing life by using a merismus. These statements take us on a tour de force of life’s topography. We’ve got an observation of life’s routine and rhythm. We will be shuttled between all these events. Life will be lived between birth and death. Life will involve loss and gain, mourning and dancing. That’s the point. It’s a summary, it’s a sampling. It’s not a statement about everything that possibly can happen, but a summary of it.
And it’s important, because sometimes this passage is presented by preachers and writers as kind of look, “There’s a time for everything, and a purpose to that time. Therefore you need discernment. You need to work out when that time is, and you need to be ready for it. You don’t want to miss the boat.” And so the onus is on your action, being ready for that pregnant moment. I think that’s the turn of passage on its head. The emphasis in this passage is not on what man does, but what God does. He’ll make everything beautiful and it’s time. It’s not so much that these are things that you and I will do. These are things that you and I will find ourselves in, situations that we will land in at a time not of our choosing. That’s the whole point. Did you choose the day you were born? Will you choose the day you die? No. That’s the whole point here.
A husband doesn’t say to his wife who wakens him at three in the morning to announce that our waters have broken, and it’s time to go, he doesn’t say, “Could you hold it in?” Because there’s a time, and a season, and God has appointed the day of our birth, and God has appointed the day of our death, and life will be lived between those two points. For some of us, it may be short. For some of us it may be long, but you don’t get to decide that. So, by the way, after you’ve run your five-mile jog to make sure you’re healthy, eat a bowl of ice cream, because in the end, you’ll not determine fully all that happens to you. That’s the point of this passage. Life is ordered by a sovereign God. That doesn’t make us passive. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t exercise our will, but He often superintends his will over our will. Sometimes He’ll incorporate our will into His purposes, and other times He’ll set them aside. That’s his prerogative. He appoints the time, and the season to all the purposes, and human actions.
Let’s begin to run through these quickly. We’ll only look at a couple, and I want to make a couple of points. Time to be born, and time to die. Solomon speaks of the book ends of life here in verse two, and it’s natural that he would start here, because life is lived between these points. Remember, this is a merismus, two opposites that include everything that happens in between them. And so, Solomon starts there, and fundamentally these are two events over which we have absolutely no control. I remember a particular afternoon, February 1991. I went out to Lisbon, a beautiful little town outside Belfast in Northern Ireland to visit a dear saint in our church, Vera Braun, who was dying and she knew it and we knew it. There was only a matter of days.
She wanted me to work on our funeral arrangements. She says, “Pastor, I’ve got two sons that aren’t Saved.” And it broke her heart, and she says, “Pastor, preach the gospel. Talk about heaven, talk about hell, exalt the Lord Jesus, don’t talk about me. Talk about the Savior.” I left there. I said, “Who ministered the who?” Got in my car, drove down the M-1 motorway into Belfast to see June, who was nursing our second child, Laura, who had just been born. What a wonderful moment. And then I got back in the car to go home, and this verse came to me, “There’s a time to be born, and there’s a time to die.” Such is life, and God appoints the time.
Then we read here, not only there’s a time to be born and a time to die, but we read here there’s a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted. Israel was an agrarian culture, and so they were being reminded that the farmer’s free to plant his crops, anything he wants even in the dead of winter, but that wouldn’t be wise. According to Genesis eight verse 22, after the flood, God says, Hey, “There’s going to be different seasons, and I’m going to maintain those seasons, and you need to be cognizant of that fact, and work within that.” On the back end of the Noahic covenant, what do we read? “While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer day and nights on that cease.” There’s a seed time, and there’s a harvest.
My first church was in a country area, half made up by farmers, and there were certain times in the year where just the numbers in the congregation would go up and down, because it was either seed time or it was harvest, and we could spiritualize that. If you look at Isaiah five verses one and five, God says to Israel, “I planted you, and I can pluck you, depending on your obedience.” Paul does it, even, speaking of the work of evangelism, in 1 Corinthians three verses five through nine, reminds us, “Somebody sows, somebody waters, but it’s God that gives the increase.” There’s a time to plant, there’s a time to pluck, and we need to be part of that process.
There’s a time to kill and a time to heal. This most likely doesn’t refer to war, because that’s picked up in verse eight, “A time of war and a time of peace.” A number of commentators suggest this, and I tend to have a sympathy with what they’re talking about. We may be talking here about sickness and plagues. Remember, we read in Hannah’s Song, 1 Samuel two verse six, that the Lord kills, and the Lord makes alive? Sometimes in life, sickness takes one, doesn’t take the other. Plagues come, one family dies, and another family survives.
Others would suggest it may be speaking about the legitimate ending of life in terms of self-defense, or capital punishment. There is a time to kill, either in self-defense, or to take the life of someone that’s taken life, for the preservation of society, and the respect for the image of God and man. There’s a time to break down and a time to build up. There’s a time for construction, and there’s a time for demolition. In the wider sense, I think it might speak of advancing, and retreating, or reversal. Sometimes a lick of paint will do the job, but other times you need the sledgehammer. Sometimes you have to start afresh, and go back to the drawing board. Sometimes the old must be replaced by the new.
But then at other times that which is can be fixed, that which remains can be strengthened. Revelation three verse two tells us that, doesn’t it? When Jesus is speaking to the church at Sardis, “You have a reputation that you’re alive but you’re dead, but strengthen those things that remain, and are ready to die.” Okay? So you and I in life will be faced with situations. Do we build this thing up? Do we breathe some new life into it? Or do we knock it down, set it aside. Just because something’s old, by the way, doesn’t mean it ought to be discarded.
I want to say to the young people in the service this morning, traditions ought not to be summarily trashed. Maybe they need a new coat of paint. Maybe they need some life breathed back into them, because they’re still good, still have their purpose. Those are the things you got to work up on life. When I was a young pastor, Warren Wiersbe really helped me think through about how you deal with a church’s traditions and its habits. He calls it the church furniture, and he warns the young pastor about getting into a new ministry and playing with the furniture.
And he says this like, “Realize why the furniture’s there, and before you move it, understand why it’s there. You better have a good reason for moving it, and if you’re going to move it, you need to stay there,” because life has taught him that when you move the furniture and leave, the people move the furniture back. That’s the way life works. Last thought here, we’ll make our applications. “There’s a time to weep and a time to laugh.” Verse four, “And a time to mourn and a time the dance.” We’ll take these two thoughts together.
This speaks of the wide range of emotions that are part of life. Which one of us hasn’t had a belly laugh? And we love that, it’s good for us. Then which one of us hasn’t dried away a tear, or wept profusely after some heartache, some difficult time in life? Solomon’s got it, hasn’t he? He knows what life is like. And I put these two things together because they intensify. I think the first line is built on, and is intensified in the second line, and so you go from crying to mourning, and you go from laughing to dancing. Some commentators argue that you’ve gone from the private arena to the public arena. And you and I need to be wise. There’s a time to laugh, and there’s a time to cry.
James four verse nine says, what? “Turn your laughter into mourning.” Sometimes we laugh at the most inappropriate time. I think our culture is losing a sense of dignity and decorum. We don’t know how to behave at a funeral. We don’t know how to behave at a ceremony. We’re all so casual. We forgot there’s times and seasons, and appropriate behavior for those times, and seasons. And you and I need to learn that we’re not to be a sourpuss all the time, and we’re not to be a circus clown all the time.
I just finished a book called Then Tress Said to Troy… It’s a book on Ohio State, and that shouldn’t surprise anybody, and I was excited to read about that before any big college game, there was a tradition at Ohio State that the team would watch a movie the night before. Now, Woody Hayes was pretty strict. He didn’t like movies that weren’t clean and wholesome, pro-American, and nine times out of 10 he encouraged the guys to watch a John Wayne flick. Some years later, Bruce Earle takes the team. He pretty much keeps Woody Hayes standards going, except he bans comedies. No comedies were allowed to be watched the night before the game. Why? Quote, this is his reasoning, “You cannot make a tackle with a smile on your face.” It’s a good quote. There’s a time to laugh, but not before a big game. Get the game face on. You got to go and tear the throat out of this team and win the game. There’s a time and a season to everything.
Now, I will pick the rest of that up, a couple of applications, and we’ll build on this next week. Number one, if you’re retaking notes and if you’re not, why not? Number one, come to terms with the sovereignty of God. That’s a good advice for the beginning of the new year. Because this passage is all about the fact that our times are in His hands. Now, we don’t like that. Oh, we’re a nation of self-determination. Baloney. We’re a nation that will rise and fall under the sovereign hand of God, and the less we acknowledge him, the quicker that demise will come. Self-Determination. What arrogance. There’s a time and a season to everything under the sun, but I don’t set those times, and I don’t manage those seasons in the large scheme of things. Therefore, I need to embrace the sovereignty of God. Birth, death, sorrow, joy, loss gain, war, peace.
Walter Kaiser says something, “Since everything has its time from God, all the labor of a man by itself cannot change the time, circumstances or control the events.” That’s the meaning of verse nine. “What profit has the worker for that which he labors?” What’s the point there? The labor of man, although significant in the ultimate sense, doesn’t alter the plan of God. We can never ensure by our labor, by our efforts that it’s only going to be times of birth, times of harvesting, times of laughing, times of love. No, it won’t always stay that way. There’ll be a time to love, and a time to hate. There’ll be a time to gain. There’ll be a time to lose. There’ll be a time to be born, and a time to die. That’s the way it is. And you know what? That’s scary. It is scary to realize that you know what? Much of life is out of our control.
But, I would say this in parentheses. Here’s the encouraging thing. We’re not left to the mercy of cold and blind fate. That’s our worldview. I don’t believe I’m part of a closed system. I don’t believe that I’m the product of some evolutionary process. I don’t believe that my life is just part of some big machine, and I’m caught in the cogs of this kind of cold universe. I don’t believe that, but I do believe there’s a sovereign God who orders the events of mankind, and He takes the initiative, and He decides what happens, and I can live with that, because He’ll make everything beautiful in his time. I got to give Him time, and I got to leave my times in His hands. He’s doing something I don’t like, don’t see, don’t want, but eventually I’ll want and thank Him for.
And you know what? If we move under the New Testament, you see those hands, our times are in his hands, Psalm 31 verse 15? Just look at those hands. There’s holes in them. They’re scarred, because God came in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus, and showed His love toward us. So He is sovereign, but He’s loving, and if I’m at His mercy, I’ll take His mercy any day of the week. That’s why I need to remind you of that fact.
John Chancellor at age 67 was just settling into retirement. At 43, he was a broadcaster, a journalist. He had been with NBC Nightly news for many years. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. He had a nice nest egg. He was looking forward to life, until he discovered he had cancer of the stomach, and his world crashed, and he became angry, and bitter with life, and with God, “Why me? Why now, why this?” But God worked in his life, made peace with both life and God, and just before his death, he said, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” That’s Ecclesiastes three, one to 11.
There’s a time and a season to everything under the sun, but we’re not speaking about your day planner, or my iPad, or whatever. We’re talking about God’s plan, and His scheme, and I got to make peace with that, and come to terms with that. Life always won’t work out the way I want. I won’t like the hand I’m dealt, but when I understand from whose hand it comes, I’ll embrace it, and I’ll say with job, “Though He slays me, yet will I trust Him.”
As the team comes up, one last thought. Number two, prepare for change, and drop the happy ever after nonsense. Okay? Grow out of your love of Disney at some point, because this passage reminds us that life will be made up of birth and death, loss and gain, crying and laughing, war and peace, and we need to prepare ourselves for those different seasons, and embrace them. “The Lord gives, the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21.
Paul says, “I have learned to be full, and I have learned to be empty.” Philippians four verses 11 through 12. Wouldn’t you agree that life is a roller coaster? One day you’ll laugh with your children. The next day they’ll make you cry. One day you’d die for them, the next day you’d kill them given the chance. That’s the way life is. It’s a firestorm one day, and it’s sunshine the next, and that’s because we’re not in Kansas anymore, to borrow a word from Dorothy in Wizard of Oz, this world isn’t what it once was. It isn’t what it will yet become. It’s a cursed place. There’s good to be had, there’s love to be enjoyed, but there’s sin to be faced, and that’s the reality, and you and I need to adjust the sovereignty of God, and we need to adjust to the fact that life will change, and we got to get rid of this happy ever after myth.
We won’t always be healthy. We won’t always have lots of friends. We won’t always have plenty of money. We won’t always balance the books at the end of the month. We won’t always score a birdie on the 18th green. We won’t always tidy our desk at the end of the day, because life is going to shuttle us between these places, and all these experiences. So there is no plateau. There is no station to arrive at. Don’t expect something more. We’re setting our young people up for failure. We’re setting our country up for failure. Life changes. Nations rise and fall. Economies boom, and economies burst. There’s births, there’s deaths.
Listen to these words from Kurt Brunner in a very good little book I got years ago. I don’t know if it’s still in print, Traveling Light. “Most of us look forward to some event, status, person, or experience to move our lives beyond the once upon a time happy ever after deal. Perhaps we expect to ride off into the sunset with our handsome prince or beautiful princess to live in an eternal bliss. For some, it may be the desire for a certain status, a certain salary. Others may want a wicked stepmother, or some undesirable person to be permanently… Exit life.”
“Regardless of the specific longings, the impact is the same. You cannot find contentment with life, because we’re eagerly waiting for a happy ending that will not come. Sooner or later, however, we must all accept the reality, happy ever after will never arrive. Even if the promotion comes, there’ll be new sources of frustration. Even if you get the raise, you won’t have enough money. Even if the wedding day arrives, this person won’t meet every need. If you get rid of the problem person, another one will poke up behind them. No matter what the dream, it cannot bring you into a state of permanent tranquility.”
That’s a fact. That’s why I like the story of the man dealing with dandelions in his garden, tried everything he could buy at Home Depot. So out a desperation, he writes a letter to the Department of Agriculture, says, “Hey, what do you suggest?” Gets a letter back. Here’s what they suggest. “Learn to live with them.” Dandelions are part of lawns. They’ll come up every season and every summer, as with other things in life. That’s why you’ve got to come to terms with the sovereignty of God, the fallenness of this world, the happy ever after comes after this life, and that’s why you need to change your attitude, and get rid of the happy ever after myth.
There’s nothing better than to get up each day and say, “This is the day the Lord has made. I’m going to rejoice in it, and everything He has in it, and there’s nothing better for me than to eat and drink, and do what God has called me to do, love those whom God has called me to love. Everything else is outside of my control. I will eat, and I will drink, and I will receive life as from the hand of God, as a gift from God.”
Let’s pray. Father, what a marvelous passage of Scripture. We need to tuck it away, as we find ourselves inside the door of 2011. We don’t know what it holds, but we know who holds it. Lord, we recognize Your sovereignty. Humble us. Make us feel small again. Help us to tremble at your throne. We’re not the masters of our own fate. Help us never to pray the arrogance of Invictus. As a nation. Give us humility. Responsibility is one thing. Self-determination, it’s an arrogant thing. Lord, help us to realize You determine. Help us therefore to fear You, seek You, honor You in all that we do as a people, as a church, and as a people, as a nation, for we ask, and pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.