Connecting Point: Time, Order & Purpose

Time directs our lives, including daily routines and special events marked by the calendar. From a personal perspective, time puts limits on us. God, on the other hand, is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. God is sovereign. His (and ours) course history.

But, we humans from about twenty years old until we are 105 (as the old song says) see short windows counted as the present. When circumstance challenges us, our assumptions lead us to

believe something is wrong. That is not necessarily the whole truth. God has a purpose in everything; we simply need to learn to trust him because, as Christ teaches, God is a God of love.

Solomon astutely wrote, “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,”

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-2). To truly find purpose in life we must look to an infinite God for answers. Like it or not we are far from infinite. The seasons of life are indeed orderly; such a structure affords us the capacity to have faith in the God who is omniscient,

omnipresent, and immutable.

The first of fourteen pairings in Ecclesiastes 3 is a great place to start, “…a time to be born and a time to die.” Birth and death are not merely accidental, they are divine appointments given to us by God. What we do with our life is a personal choice.

Back to that twenty-year-old I spoke of earlier: because we are wholly dependent on someone else for numerous years, we humans seem to constantly get more and more complex. Life, however, becomes an exercise of our free will, which in turn

reveals wisdom, temperance, fidelity, you know what I mean. As life begins with a heartbeat, life ends with the last heartbeat. Physical death serves as a reminder that our bodies are not

immortal.

Today we are far more removed from an agrarian society than in Solomon’s day, hence Solomon again: “…A time to plant and a time to uproot.” Unless you happen to be one of those green thumbs out there, the cyclical season of planting and harvesting is again natural just as birth and death. Farmers plant seeds, it is part of a farmer’s purpose. Likewise, farmers also harvest at the appropriate time which serves another purpose.

The third paring, “…a time to kill and a time to heal,” fits well with the previous two observations from Solomon, all three really speak to the natural order of life. Considering the context and ancient culture being driven by an agrarian economy, it’s likely this

reference is speaking to the care and production of livestock. Kill in the Hebrew is HARAG, meaning to slay, while RASAH is

translated murder, this distinction is very important.

There you go. Something to think about. King Solomon is simply stating that everything in life serves a purpose; natural order reminds us of this simple fact.