He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no man can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3: 11, NKJV.
Gracious God, we thank You that even though we exist “in time,” You have created us with the desire, and the capacity, to dwell in eternity. Please continue to teach us now as we study Your Word. In the name of Jesus we do pray. Amen.
The first sentence in our Scripture for today, came to me while I was at the gym yesterday. I usually take this time to talk to God, and to ask Him to share His thoughts with me so that I can share them with You, during our devotional period. I had just looked up at one of the television sets (I usually do not) and noted that there were two young women standing in front of the cameras, conversing, just before a break. One of them was very, very, thin. She was a beautiful young woman, and I found myself wondering why she was so thin. Let me hasten to say, that there is absolutely nothing wrong with being thin, or very thin, for that matter; providing you are healthy, and the decision to be thin is your own. By your own I mean, not just because, you saw a television ad; you were the target of an indiscreet comment by someone; you made an ad hoc decision to lose weight because, “everyone is doing it,” or, because it is considered beautiful.
As I was thinking about these things, I felt a very strong urge to tell people everywhere, that God had made them beautiful, in their time. There is only one of you, created beautifully, by God; “for such a time as this;” your time! God has given you this time for you to invest it, and bring out all the beauty that is within you. Being healthy can facilitate the process. Therefore, our motivation should be the acquisition of optimum health; not to fit someone else’s definition of what it means to be beautiful!
This brings us to our second thought, “He has put eternity in our hearts …” This is significant. At the beginning of the chapter, events are juxtaposed to emphasize their difference. “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…” At the end of these comparisons, God explains that He has made everything beautiful in its time. It would seem that it is the timing, and not the event, per se, that makes things beautiful.
When something is done “in its time,” the result is usually beautiful. If you should “pluck up” what is planted “before the time,” there would hardly be any beauty to appreciate in the product. When a child is “born before his or her time,” much of the beauty of the occasion is lost because of the dangers, and the risks, that the child faces, and the stress that we all feel. If a child dies as an infant, in an accident, or because of some illness, we refer to it as an “untimely death,” because we usually think of the length of life, in the terms of the Bible’s, “The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong…” (Psalm 90: 10, NRSV). Consequently, we do not find beauty in the death of an infant. In fact, death is never beautiful. Nevertheless, there is some measure of closure, when someone falls asleep in the “evening of their life,” rather than at the beginning.
Therefore, because we live in a world of sin, God knew that things would not always occur “in [their] time;” and, that as a result, much of life’s beauty would be lost. In His mercy and love, He “has put eternity in our hearts!” He has given us something more to look forward to! He has given us a desire for eternity! Oftentimes we do not understand some of the things that happen in our lives; that is because God sees the end from the beginning, while “no man can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.” But when you do not understand what God is doing, just remember, the beauty, is in God’s timing; and one day, you and I, will understand!
Note: There has been some editing done to today’s devotional.