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Ecclesiastes 3 - Finding Meaning in God's Sovereignty
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When I was 14 years old, I was in my driveway playing basketball with my dad, my brother, and some neighbors. My dad had just turned 40 and was wearing a boot from a sprained ankle. Being a thoughtless teenager, I pointed out the obvious: "Hey Dad, you're getting older, you're getting injured, you're gaining weight, you're losing your hair."
My dad looked at me and said something I've never forgotten: "Just wait, son. Your time is coming."
At 14, I didn't understand. But life flashes by. Now I'm playing basketball in my own front yard, I've just turned 40, I get hurt—and my kids say the exact same things to me. Inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened. Time flies so fast that if you blink, you're going to miss it.
Solomon, the wisest and richest man of his time, made a profound observation: he says 38 times in Ecclesiastes that life is like a vapor. It's here and then it's gone. Like trying to capture the wind in your hand, the moment you open your fingers, it escapes.
Solomon tried everything to find meaning. He accumulated massive wealth. He pursued education and building projects. He had 300 wives and 700 concubines. He tried every food, every entertainment. And at the end of the day, it all left him empty. It was meaningless—like chasing the wind.
Then Solomon introduces a revolutionary idea: if there's a God in heaven, He can teach us something not just in the big moments, but in all the spaces of life in between.
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.
Solomon presents 14 pairs of opposites. Life is full of ups and downs, predictable change. Just like God created the planet with seasons—summer, fall, winter, spring—we experience seasons in our lives too.
On day four of creation, God created seasons. That means the cycles we see in nature are also cycles we experience in life. Some seasons we like, some we don't. But every season has its own divine purpose.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
God has placed a longing in every human heart—a restlessness to seek Him, to ask, "Is there a God? How did all this come to be?" Every civilization, every people group throughout history has felt this pull. That restlessness was designed to draw us close to God.
Paul echoed this when speaking to philosophers in Athens:
From one man, God made all the nations that they should inhabit the whole earth. And he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any of us.
You are not a cosmic accident. The hospital where you were born, the family you were born into, the city you grew up in, your current workplace, your neighborhood—none of that is random. God has sovereignly ordained it all for a purpose.
Solomon says that if you can go to work and enjoy it, that's a gift from God. If you can eat a meal and find satisfaction in it, that's the gift of God. He observes that a man working in his field, sweating in manual labor, going home to eat simple food with his family around the table, is happier than Solomon himself with all his wealth and 300 wives.
More doesn't mean happier. God is the one who gives us the ability to enjoy.
Solomon also glimpses into eternity:
Whatever is has already been and what will be has been before. And God will call the past to account.
There will be a time of judgment, a time of reckoning. Everything wrong in the world will be made right. This gives weight to our lives. What we say and do is not meaningless—one day we will stand before God.
One of my favorite phrases in the Bible is: "And it came to pass." This means seasons come into your life and seasons pass out of your life. Seasons come and seasons go.
I remember seasons of wrestling with my kids when they were young—they'd come at me like velociraptors, one high, one low, one behind. My wife would say, "Doug, don't hurt the boys!" Now she says, "Boys, don't hurt your father." That season came and it also went.
I remember summer vacations like the Griswold family—20 states in 20 days in a minivan. My kids would roll their eyes. Those moments came and they went. I wish I could have frozen them in time, but I couldn't. Now I have the privilege of taking my adult sons on vacations—a coffee shop in Arkansas playing chess, a 48-hour trip to New York. Different seasons, different memories, but they're real and they're passing.
Change is inevitable. There is no growth without change. You won't grow unless you change. But here's what we often forget:
We live in a society where there's a pill for everything, but pain is a powerful teacher. It forces us to embrace loss, pain, and grief. This is what it means to be human.
If every season has something to teach us, how do we embrace those seasons? Let's walk through the four seasons God created.
Spring is moments of new beginnings, emerging out of winter, hopes and dreams coming alive. It's a time of opportunity and risk.
I remember taking our son home from the hospital. We had no idea what we were doing. We couldn't even properly install the car seat. It was expectancy, adrenaline, being in over our heads—but we had to figure it out. That's spring.
Maybe you're a brand new Christian here today. You became a Christian a month ago. You're learning to pray, learning to read the Bible, feeling conviction for the first time. Maybe you're in a new relationship or a new job. All these new things you haven't figured out yet—that's the season of spring. Out of the dirt, something new emerges through God's restoration and redemption.
Today is the first day of summer. In summer, things are growing. There's a time to dance, to laugh, to work. Everything is growing—it's a time of abundance and activity.
But summer also brings distractions. The days are long, and there are more things to do than hours in the day. You can't do it all, or you will be exhausted. This is the time to protect some things and nourish others, to create boundaries.
I remember the season when we were raising young kids, going to sports and camps, I was working here, and we were building a ministry called 4KIDS. We were just grinding, working, because it felt like God was at work and things were growing. These are beautiful seasons of life.
Fall is the season of harvest and evaluation. You gather the results of all the work you did in spring and summer. You see your successes and your failures. Did you plant? Did you water? Did the produce come?
Maybe you set a New Year's resolution to get out of debt, and you're in even more debt. You need to stop and evaluate: what didn't work? Maybe you wanted to graduate from college. You studied hard while working, walked across the stage, and graduated. What a powerful moment of harvest.
Fall is when you experience your kids' graduation, pay off your debt, buy your house. You see the work of your hands and thank God for what He's doing.
Winter is the season most of us don't want to go through. Everything in your life looks dead. But looking dead doesn't mean it's dead.
In 10th grade, I got cut from the basketball team. I looked at the list of who made it. My name wasn't there. That dream, all that hard work—it seemed like a waste.
More painfully, my wife and I experienced the birth and death of our first son. We went from labor and delivery to a funeral. We went from smiling and laughing to her being in bed in the dark, unable to get up. We experienced the failure of a church and brokenness of relationships. For 12 to 18 months, everything was dying around us.
But there are things God teaches us in winter that He can't teach us at any other time.
God is close to those who are broken-hearted, those who are broken and contrite in spirit.
I love that this church has ministries like Cancer Care, where people who received a diagnosis that changed their life walk through it, then help others walk through it. There's Divorce Care for when marriages fall apart. There's Grief Share where if you lose a son, a parent, or a spouse, you're not alone.
God has a way to do something in your heart that no one else can do. You don't forget, but healing comes, and you watch that season pass.
We resist seasons by looking to the future: "I'll be happy when I get the job. I'll be joyful when I get into a relationship. I'll be the best version of myself when these things happen."
This is called destination disease. You think your life will begin when you arrive at a certain point.
Others have the opposite problem. They want to go back to "the good old days." They want to freeze time, stop time, reverse time. They live in the past.
Both are toxic. They either rob the future or rob the present.
There's a beautiful saying: "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That's why they call it the present."
God's grace is for today. God can meet you in your season, whether spring, summer, fall, or winter. He wants to meet you in the present, bringing wisdom, comfort, energy, and peace.
We also resist by trying to manipulate seasons. I hear people in South Florida say, "I love the long days of summer, but I don't want the heat, rain, or humidity." We want to mash up the best of every season and create our own.
But just like we don't control the weather, we don't control these seasons as they come and go from our lives. God is the only one who can make things beautiful in His own time.
Paul wrote:
I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation.
He didn't want to be in prison. He wanted to be a preacher, but God wanted him to be a preacher who was a prisoner. He saw a divine purpose for the season he was in.
You can't control seasons. You can't avoid seasons. But you can embrace seasons.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
We're not built to understand the big picture the way God does. He is God and we are not.
Instead of arguing with God about why a season is happening, ask: What do you want to teach me?
This is like a small child trusting their father. Even when crazy things are happening in the news, the child thinks, "My dad will protect our family. My dad will bring home food. My dad will provide and care for us." Most kids aren't stressed if they have a good father because they know dad's got it.
So the question becomes: Do you trust your heavenly Father?
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and have been called according to his purpose.
No matter what season comes—high, low, or in-between—God is at work in that season for your good and for His glory. So embrace it. Trust Him. Because He's God and you're not.
Solomon was right: apart from God, life is heavy. It's a vapor. It's beyond grasping. It seems meaningless.
But in a relationship with the living God, we find meaning because He placed eternity in our hearts.
Your life may feel meaningless. You may see God as just a big guy up there, someone you come to when you need to get rid of guilt or find some energy for the week. But God is so much more than that.
He is your Creator. He made you in His image and made you for a purpose. You're not here by random coincidence. You're here because God has a divine purpose for your life.
Most people say, "God is my father." But that's not actually true for most people. God is your Creator. The Bible says God has one begotten son: Jesus. The only way to become a child of God is through adoption.
When you give your life to Jesus:
God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes doesn't have to perish, but can have everlasting life.
This requires a response: Are you ready to say to God, "I'm a sinner. I need a savior"?
Are you ready to say, "Jesus, take my sin. I want to become adopted into the family of God"?
You can wait to do this as long as you want, but I hope it's today. God is waiting to adopt you.
