When I had my youth ministry I had a few guys that were a bit...hyper. Nothing against that, I was that way when I was a kid, a lot younger than them and before circumstances in my life made me closed off, but believe it or not I used to be super hyper. But one thing I always told those kids was this: There is a time for everything. When I had a bunch of kids move up into my group, I started that first Sunday off with this little speech.
There is a time for everything.
There's a time to have fun, a time to get crazy.
A time to worship, a time to be still.
A time to listen, and a time to be heard.
We will have fun, we will get wild, but we will also pay attention, because what is said here is important.
So begins chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes. There is a time for all things, you just need to know the proper time and respect that.
Verses 9-15 tells us a lot about God and what he has done for us.
He has given all of us a task, and there will be a time to work on that task.
He makes everything beautiful in it's time. This is a great sentence. God will make everything beautiful in it's own time, and with God making it beautiful, it is he who determines when the time is right. If he sent Jesus to us at the perfect time, then he will make everything beautiful at the perfect time. Take comfort in that. While your life may seem horrible and ugly, know that God will make it beautiful at the absolute perfect time.
Not only that, but God has put eternity in our hearts. A great movie that comes to mind for this is Troy, and how Achilles is more worried about being remembered throughout the ages as opposed to being loved by a family (scene where he speaks to his mother). We all want our fifteen minutes, we all want to be remembered and memorialized. We all want to know what lies behind death. God has put this in our hearts. So much that we want to know the beginning as well. I remember hearing about how telescopes were getting so advanced that soon we would be able to see the big bang by looking further and further into space, then suddenly that talk stopped. As of right now we can see about 700 million years after the big bang. (There's a lot of views here which still work with scripture, i.e. young earth and old earth Christians. Take your view on it and enjoy, it doesn't bother me.) But man has eternity in our hearts, and God has done that so that we can never see the beginning or end of what he has done/will be doing.
With all of that, God has given us a great gift. While all that we do is meaningless, we can still enjoy ourselves. I'm currently playing the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I pour a lot of time into that because it's such an intensive game. All that time and effort I put into it though, is pointless. But I enjoy it, and it is because of this gift from God that I can enjoy it. So we much find joy in the things that we do, because God has given us the opportunity and gift to enjoy them.
Everything that God does lasts forever. The grace that he made available to us, the salvation that we may receive will endure forever (not eternal salvation, but it will always be there.) Whatever God has done we cannot undo. And he has done these things so that people can recognize and respect (fear) him.
Then there's the last few words of verse 15: God seeks what has been driven away. How is this not the story of the Gospel? Sin has driven us away from God, so he came to seek us out and make it easy for us to come back to him.
Today we have a challenge. God has given each of us a task, and that task is to help him seek out those who have been driven away. Find someone who has been driven away by their sin, and lead them back to God.
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