One of my favorite stories of faith in the sovereign timing of God comes from the Civil War. During the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21,1861, Confederate General Bernard Bee coined General Jackson’s nickname when he pointed to him seated on his horse amid heavy fire and shouted, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!” Jackson was later asked how he could be so brave in the midst of such a raging battle. His answer reveals a steadfast faith in the Lord who holds the times and seasons of life in his mighty hands.
“My religious belief teaches me to feel as safe in battle as in bed. God has fixed the time for my death. I do not concern myself about that, but to be always ready, no matter when it may overtake me. That is the way all men should live, and then all would be equally brave”
Ecclesiastes chapter three opens with one of the most widely recognized portions of Scripture—a poem so well known that many who hear it may be surprised that it comes from the Bible. “After everything else he has said about the vanity and futility of human existence, we might well have expected the Preacher to say something different and more discouraging about time. Instead he wrote a poem about the orderliness of every time that God has ordained.”[1] This poem includes not a single overt reference to God, and yet his sovereignty is woven through every line.
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
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;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace. —Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
The introduction that “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (3:1), gives us our first clue that we’re considering God’s hand at work in our lives. Rather than these seasons taking place “under the sun,” we’re thinking about “every matter under heaven.” “God is sovereign over time and whatever happens in time. This is evident from the sweeping breadth of verse 1. . . Nothing happens outside the will of God. In the words of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, his ‘holy, wise, and powerful’ providence governs ‘all his creatures, and all their actions’ (A. 11).” [2]
In each line of the poem, the Preacher gives examples of the things for which there are times and seasons, pairs of opposites which implicitly include the entire spectrum between them. For example, There is a time to be born and a time to die, which infers every matter of life between birth and death. Another line tells us there’s a time to weep and a time to laugh, which includes the right times for every emotive expression in between. “The combined effect of the poem puts flesh on the skeleton of human life. There are seasons in the world that act upon us (war and peace), but almost every pair in the poem involves our connectedness to others between the moments of our birth and death.”[3]
Every moment of our lives is held in the hands of our sovereign God. Every day, time, and season have been ordained, decreed from before time began, by the One who works all things according to his good pleasure, for the good of those who love him, and to the praise of his glorious grace (Phil. 2:13; Rom. 8:28; Eph. 1:6). This is true not only of individuals, but also of nations. In his appointed time, the Lord called his people, the nation of Israel, out of Egypt and brought them into the land he’d promised them, driving out the pagan nations before them. He planted Israel in that good land, but then, after hundreds of years of disobedience and apostasy, he plucked them up and drove them out. The stones of the temple were cast away and destroyed by invading armies, but at the right time, the Lord sought out his people who were called by his name and gathered them back, and the temple was rebuilt.
Furthermore, if this poem is true of individuals, every line of it is true of our Lord Jesus, who was born in “the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4), “died at the right time for the ungodly” (Rom. 5:6), and then rose again on the third day as the Scriptures had promised (Hosea 6:2; 1 Cor. 15:4). Every moment of his life between his birth and death were not only foreordained, but Jesus lived them in his full humanity and wholly obediently to his Father (Ps. 40:7–8). He wept at Lazarus’s grave and danced at weddings; he gathered his disciple band together and he cast away (repelled by his holiness) the scribes and Pharisees; he killed the barren fig tree and healed multitudes of the lame and sick; he came to bring peace between God and man and division between the church and the world; he spoke words of light and life to thousands, but before Pilate he spoke not a word in his own defense. “From his birth to his death and then on to his resurrection, Jesus did everything timely in his saving work.” [4]
Why is this good news for us, here and now? Because we can know for certain that the times and seasons of our lives are firmly in the grip of the God who wrote the days that he’d formed for us “when as yet there was none of them” (Ps. 139:16). When times are good, we should prepare our hearts that it will not always be so. Likewise, when times are bad, when we’re struggling through a hard season, we can know that it won’t last forever. But most importantly, regardless of whether we’re in the best of times or the worst of times, we can know that every moment of it is superintended by our sovereign God, and we can rest our trust entirely in him. In your good times laugh, dance, embrace, love, and speak peace to one another. And in bad times, weep, mourn, keep silence if you must, and follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. —1 Peter 2:21–23
When I was finishing this post last week, I was interrupted by the news that my dad had fallen from his bed and broken a hip. Dad lives in a memory care facility and because of his advanced dementia he cannot effectively communicate. My husband and I took turns staying with Dad from the moment he entered the Emergency Room to his recovery on the Orthopedic floor of the hospital. Jim took the night shift, and I took the day shift. My brother and his wife drove down from north Texas to be with us.
It soon became evident that Dad wouldn’t be able to undergo any physical therapy with the goal of walking on his own again. He didn’t understand why he was there, was already unable to follow directions, and the pain of the attempts to get him to stand triggered his fight or flight response. It was horrible. So we made the difficult but necessary decision to change course and offer him palliative care instead. He is now back in his room at his memory care facility under the care both of the staff there who know and love him, as well as a hospice team of nurses, a social worker, and a chaplain who are focused on keeping him comfortable and well.
This is a time for us to mourn, certainly, and we are. It’s so hard to lose Dad gradually over this season of several years. We know that the Lord has fixed a day for his death, but the Lord also ordained every one of these days we’ve just experienced with him in the hospital, and every day between now and the day he breathes his last. This has been a long week, but even still, it won’t last forever, it’s merely a vapor, a breath, and will be gone before we know it. Measured against eternity it is nothing. But here and now, it is the time under heaven in which we are living, and God’s holy, wise, and powerful providence is working even this according to his good pleasure, for our good, to the praise of his glorious grace. So, I must continue entrusting my Daddy and myself to the Lord, for he is good, and his steadfast love endures forever (Ps. 100:5).
[1] Phillip Ryken, Ecclesiastes: Why Everything Matters, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway,2010), 78
[2] Ryken, 80
[3] David Gibson, Living Life Backward; How Ecclesiastes Teaches us to Live in Light of the End, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 54
[4] Ryken, 83
