There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
...He has made everything beautiful in it's time...
I read this passage from Ecclesiastes 3 the other day. I wasn't really trying to think about beauty, but there it was again. That sentence at the end hit me. It hit me hard. God has made everything beautiful in it's time. Now, I don't know about you, but there are some things on that list that I don't find very beautiful. Mourning. Uprooting. Hate. War.
This really messes up my thoughts.
Interesting. When I read it, I don't think the Bible is saying that those things are beautiful, but that everything is made beautiful in God's timing. I think of the song lyric "You have turned my mourning into dancing..." Maybe it's not everything on the list that's beautiful, but what He makes out of it.
ReplyDeleteJust a thought...
God made everything beautiful in it's appropriate time. Hate are war are not typically beautiful but I look at some of the psalms that I would describe as prayers full of hate. God also sent Israel to war to take the land He had given them. These things are appropriate. Yet as everything on the list has an appropriate time, it seems that each also have an inappropriate time.
ReplyDeleteI also think that He was a very conflicted man. If you read these verses in context(including in the verses following), Solomon flip flops back and forth on weather or this is a positive thing overall. Which is it Solomon, is everything beautiful and appropriate in it's time, or is there no point to life on this earth other than to fear God, and to eat, drink, and be happy, which you stress so many time throughout (even this is God's gift that some receive and some do not).