our dance

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

Ecclesiastes 3:1

God decrees our times and our seasons. We are born into a world that turns night to day, tilted to create winter and summer, orbiting a burning ball of gasses every year in a constant circle of synchronous seasons. And as we age we look back on days, months, seasons, and years. It is the handiwork of our Creator.

At our best we move to this seasonal, sovereign beat of the dance of the universe, part of the glorious worship that all of creation pours out in praise of the Creator. Yet in our brokenness, as years advance, we notice that despite the beauty, it is all marred… a red welt of a scar ripped  across a beautiful face… less than perfect. We experience sickness. We sorrow in death. There are atrocious evils done by people that hurt us. Realistically we know we do wrong as well. We feel dark nights of intense loss. We suffer shortened days of cold winter in long nights waiting for warmth. We then burn in the scorching heat of a blazing summer praying for shade. And yet, each morning we wake up, in the embrace of a new day’s dance grip, led to participate in it all once again… day after day after day.

The Preacher in Ecclesiastes, the old and jaded King Solomon, knew both the poetry of praise in this cycle of life, and the pitiful perspective of what feels like endless repetition in a broken universe. How then do we reject the pessimism of the latter viewpoint while joining in the songs of praise all creation still tries to sing? There are three perspectives elsewhere in Ecclesiastes 3 that clear us of “vanity thinking” and give us real hope. 

1. What God has made in each season is beautiful and purposeful (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Spring has fresh life. Summer has warm vitality. Autumn blazes in glorious color. Winter crystallizes beauty with frozen wonder.
2. God’s work endures forever (Ecclesiastes 3:14). These times will turn in a much bigger wheel…bringing us into eternity with God. And it will always lead to worship because forever with God is our destination.
3. Mortality forces our focus on what is really important. We are dust and return to dust (Ecclesiastes 3:20). We have an expiration date stamped on us. We don’t know when it is. We must make the most of what we have been given. We must then wring all we can by faith in God from our hours, days, months, seasons, years, and lifetimes… and then there is a glorious eternity made possible for us by the gospel of Jesus Christ!