Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

 ¹ There is a time for everything,
       and a season for every activity under heaven:

 ² a time to be born and a time to die…

This is how Ecclesiastes chapter 3 begins.  A time to be born and a time to die.  Yesterday I celebrated my 30th birthday (getting old, I know)…this morning we received news of the passing away of a friend.  Birthdays are days when life is celebrated and yet in no time at all we can be reminded that life is fragile, that life can be short and that often we don’t have the answers to the many ‘why’ questions that life can bring up.

On down in verse 11 it says, ^‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end…’

We just can’t fathom so much of what lifes throws up and it seems that’s ok because it says it here in this passage.  But it also says that God has set eternity in the hearts of men.  We are eternal beings, created not just for life but for eternity.  For soldiers coming home from war, surely the journey home is the greatest journey…as eternal beings – who have found our eternal purpose and reason for existence in Jesus – surely for us too, the greatest journey of all will be that journey when we go home.  That day when we go home to the Father.  When we arrive in that place where no suffering exists, where hurt and pain and tears are no more.  What a day that will be.

Pray that God would increase that awareness of eternity in your heart.  Pray that you will value your life today even more and those people placed in your life…

Pray for those you know for whom life is currently really hard.  Pray especially for those who are grieving the loss of someone so close to them and all that that brings…pray that they too can find comfort in having ‘eternity in our hearts’ and that loved ones in Christ who have passed away have made the greatest journey home they could ever make…