Sunday, June 3, 2012

Sunday, June 3rd

Today's passage from the Chronological Bible In a Year Reading Plan is Proverbs 1-3
Today's scripture focus is Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

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

As we read through that list we realize that there truly is a time for everything.

Our lives are filled with seasons - and seasons change!  The season you are in right now, you will likely not be in forever (unless you're on your deathbed).

There's seasons of joy, sadness, health, sickness, wealth, controversy, peace, confrontation, mending - all kinds of seasons!

What we need to remember is that they change.  They always change.  Just because we are wealthy now, doesn't mean we always will be.  Just because we are poor now, doesn't mean we always will be.  Just because we are grieving now, doesn't mean we always will be.

Are you seeing the pattern?

So, where IS the consistency then?

God.

God is the one constant in our every changing seasons.  He is with us throughout all of them.  And if we look for them, we will find moments of happiness, moments of gratitude, moments of thankfulness, moments of love - in any of those seasons - even the really, really hard ones.

Mark Driscoll says this....
In whatever season you’re in, is God there? Of course, God’s there. Has God given you opportunities for happiness in the middle of it? Of course he has...

And I would just submit this to you. Every morning you should pray and ask the Spirit of God to open your eyes. That as you’re walking through your life, you’re not, you know, living in light of your past or living in light of your future. But, you’re really savoring your present and ask God to keep your eyes open so that you can see the opportunities that he has given you where his kingdom breaks in. ...Just knowing that the same God who showed up every day ‘til now is not gonna leave when I need him most.


We have different seasons in our lives and some of them are downright horrible to go through.  And that's where faith comes in.  Faith that God knows that He's doing.

This is where trusting that God is good and God is in charge and God is gonna work out all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose, comes into practical reality. Here’s the beauty of it. How many of you – any of you weavers work on a loom? Do tapestry, right? You look at it from underneath. There’s a great metaphor here that I took from one of the commentators. He says, “If you look underneath a loom, is it beautiful from the underside?” It’s not. What do you see? Knots, snarls, it’s a mess. There’s nothing beautiful about it. That’s what Solomon calls life under the sun 29 times in Ecclesiastes. It’s life under the loom, just looking up saying, “This doesn’t look very beautiful to me. This looks like knots and snarls and frayed loose ends. It doesn’t look like anything beautiful to me. It doesn’t look like there’s any great artists up there weaving together a beautiful piece of tapestry called history.”

And then, all of a sudden, what you see is, from God’s vantage point, it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful. He’s weaving history together exactly as he desires. And from under the loom, it looks horrific. From above the loom, it is glorious. You see symmetry and color and orderliness. And from God’s perspective, he sees from beginning to end and all we get is this little sliver of our life. The short few years and these couple of deep breaths that we call our existence. And what we want is we want to see as he sees. We want to understand what he’s doing. And the beauty of it is, for those who trust in him, there will be a day where we die and we rise and we sit with him above. And we see, from beginning to end, that God has made everything what? Beautiful in its time. In its time.

I wrote about exactly that tapestry metaphor on my "real life" blog too.



We need to remember to live in the present.

Not to be stuck in the past and all it's failures.  And not all wrapped up in the future either - being so concerned about the coming up season that we miss out on the one happening right now.

We should, however, learn from our past and from the lives of others, instead of learning the hard way all over again.  We should have relationships with people who are in seasons of life different than ours - they can help prepare the way for us.


And yes, we're all going to die.  But in the meantime, we live.  So, we better get to it!
Wealth is not just eating good food, but enjoying the food you eat. Wealth is not just drinking good drink, it’s enjoying whatever it is that you drink, even if that’s just water. Wealth is not having a lot of stuff, it’s enjoying whatever you have. Wealth is having memories of the times that God enabled you to be happy. And wealth is having people you love to be happy with and to do good for. That makes you wealthy. I don’t want you to miss this. I love you. I’m your pastor. I don’t want you to miss your life. I don’t want you to be so frantic and forgetting about the hand of God that one day you die, and at the end, you watch it and you realize that God was everywhere and your eyes were closed and you missed every opportunity he gave to laugh. To eat. To drink. To cry. To work. To save. To spend. I don’t want that for ‘ya. I want you to live with Christ. I want you to die with Christ. I want you to rise with Christ. And as he brings it all to account, I want you to celebrate with Christ.


Tomorrow's scripture focus: Ecclesiastes 3:9-15
Tomorrow's Bible In a Year Passage passage:  Proverbs 4-6

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