You’ve seen these words, perhaps, at weddings and maybe at funerals. I’ve seen them at dedications and at cancer clinics. They are famous words, useful words, but often left incomplete because they are often partially quoted without reference to their entire context. Here are the words in their broader context:
“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. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, 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” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-11, ESV).
I sat next to a man once, outside an emergency room as he processed a trauma that enveloped his life, and we talked about the fact that it is God who establishes time and it is God who establishes our times. Events and influences happen in our lives. Some we are personally responsible for. Some come through the power given to others. Some events or influences seem to come from “out of the blue.” But in reality, God has given to us the “business to be busy with.” Day after day, aware of it or not, each of us works out God’s agenda for us. And, with our sense of time, it comes and goes, God also gives us an awareness of the immensity of time that includes us: eternity.
The God who puts eternity in our hearts must be bigger than eternity if he can handle it so deftly. And he must know eternity implicitly if he prescribes to us those segments in which we live. So, God has my time, your time, in his very capable, very competent, very knowledgeable, and very loving hands. He decides our time and our times.
Change, then, does not originate in the imagination of zealous men or in the dissatisfaction of shifting temperaments. Change comes, ultimately, not as forced from one power source upon another, though it may be experienced that way. Change ultimately flows from the heart and mind of the Creator who has determined that there is a time and a season for every matter under heaven.
I have learned over the years to trust God’s timing. I have no regrets nor fears nor anger nor sadness that next week will be the last Good News column. Personally, I have faith and I have trust. Thetime has come.
There was a time to speak, and we have agreed with God that there is now a time to be silent (sort of).
Beginning with the first issue in October the News- Herald will reinstate a writing rotation among local Christian clergy who wish to participate in a Spiritual Reflections column. They will each write for a month, giving each time to develop his or her ideas and express unique faith insights with you more completely.
Next week I’ll have some people to thank, at least one person to apologize to, and a final reflection on the Good News that God has written in the life and death of his Son, Jesus.
Pastor Dale McIntire has served as pastor of the Cornerstone Community Church in Grand Marais since April of 1995.
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