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There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens...
I want to know when.
I want to know when things are going to get back to normal. I want to know when I can go to worship and sit in a packed pew with fellow Christians. I want to know when I can go out to eat (inside) with family and friends and linger at the table long after dessert is gone. I want to know when I can go to a baseball game and sit in the bleachers with a few buddies.
I want to know when, and I bet you do too.
Today’s passage is so apt, then. (And if you haven’t already, I encourage you to take a moment to read the whole thing now before continuing with the devotion.) There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the heavens. From beginning to end—a time to be born and a time to die—God has set a time for everything. Some of these lines carry an extra punch this year: a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. If Eugene Petersen were writing The Messagetoday he might say “a time to embrace and a time to social distance.”
After the poem we get a little interpretation: no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. Put another way, we don’t know when God is going to do what God is going to do. But he does. I think there is a challenge here, but also a comfort.
First, the challenge. When we endure something that feels like an existential threat—when we feel like something threatens our very being—we are acutely aware of our dependence on God. But over time we forget, and fall back into regular patterns of thinking that we have to work out everything for ourselves. Maybe we’re no better than the Israelites who trembled at the sight of God’s lightning on Mt Sinai, but who quickly rebelled when they couldn’t see him anymore. Sidney Greidanus sums it up well: “God’s times make us aware of our helplessness; we cannot control the times. God’s times make us aware of our total dependence on God: we do not even know the times.” The challenge is knowing that we have no control over the events of this life—knowing that we are totally dependent upon God.
But there is comfort here, too. We don’t know when the Covid outbreak will end, but God does. We can be assured that it will, and that God has plans for us beyond this earthly season. We read that God has set eternity in the human heart. This does not make the suffering of this season any less real. But it assures us that God will get the final say. And that final say comes in Jesus Christ, God’s Word made flesh, who will return bringing a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain (Rev. 21:1-4). There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. Thanks be to God!
~Pastor Matt