Everything Beautiful

Ecclesiastes 1:1 ESV

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 ESV

Ecclesiastes 3:11 ESV

Hebrews 11:6 ESV

Isaiah 44:6 (I Am first and last)

Exodus 3:14 (I Am who I Am)

John 11:25 (I Am Resurrection and Life)

Revelation 1:8 (I Am Alpha and Omega)

The author of Ecclesiastes is not named but we are told in Ecclesiastes 1:1, “The words of the Preacher, the son of David, King in Jerusalem.”

We know the author is ‘preacher’, and is a son of David the King in Jerusalem. Scholars do not all agree which son wrote this book that is categorized as a book of wisdom literature. Since we are told the author is ‘Preacher’ we’ll go with that.

The passage I am most familiar with in Ecclesiastes 3 is found in verses 1-8

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up 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 together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.”

I’m old enough to remember growing up hearing the song “…to everything turn turn turn there is a season; and a time and purpose unto heaven.”  I’m famous for re-writing lyrics but that is how the line stuck with me.

To everything there is a season and a time and a purpose unto heaven. The hit song I remembered mastered the reminder of the repetition of the seasons.

Turn turn turn. The seasons come and go, they come and go.

But then in the first part of Ecclesiastes 3:11, the preacher wrote “He has made everything beautiful in its time.”

In this part of the verse the preacher more than gives us hope of getting endlessly caught up in the monotony of the seasons than come and go.

The writer tells us definitively that Creator God made “everything beautiful in its time”. The author is telling us it’s more than a thought or a hope…it’s a promise. “God has MADE” is written in the past tense.

In other words when the world began…God made it so that it will all be beautiful when the time for beauty comes.

It’s already done. In the beginning it was created that way.

Now for western culture readers we often see time as being linear with a beginning and an end.

Even though it’s not linear, I have to ask a rhetorical question, is the beginning the beginning?  And is the ending the end?

The preacher reminds us in the second part of Ecclesiastes 3:11 that, “he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

When God made, God made eternity for man. SO man cannot know (find) beginning to end.

It is quandary. Why would God not want man to know what God has done from the beginning to the end?

Is it possible that it’s a matter of what is unseen because of faith? Yes that’s true, but I assert that it’s more…

We know from Hebrews 11:6, “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

Over and over again God proclaims, “I AM”. I am the first and I am the last (Isaiah 44:6). I am who I am (Exodus 3:14). I am the resurrection and life (John 11:25). I am the Alpha and the Omega (Rev. 1:8).

God put a desire in us to seek and to know the love of God. God put a desire for eternity in us. Because we are created in the image of God, we long to be connected to creator God who loves us.

We long to be accepted and loved.

We long to know the wonder of God.

We long for God.

Today’s Spiritual Practice is: Love God

God made all things beautiful…that includes you.

In God, Deborah

acrazyjourney.com