God makes all things beautiful in its time - Ecc. 3:11

The book of Ecclesiastes is a rather controversial one...and I would not dare to weigh in on a theological debate over its acceptability.  My privilege in life - and in my pillows - is to offer a word of encouragement, to exhort my friends to seek the Lord and His hope and to give a taste of what I find to be His utterly profound and rich message to us for today.  I will leave the theological debate to others.

Our author does ask some hard questions (some of which we still ask today) and may be rather unsure himself of what happiness is.  What the author seems fairly certain of, however, is that he believes God is eternal, wise and sovereign. That's where we will camp for a moment.  I believe from this one verse you can see that:

1)  God will be the one doing the creating.  He was "in the beginning", He is today and He will be forever.  When we recognize the work is His, we will be more hopeful about the purpose and the result.  When we recognize His work is good, we will open up our clenched fists to receive His grace.

2)  His idea of "beautiful" will be different than ours.  The word originally meant "appropriate or fitting".  That means things will make sense eventually...however, the picture of "beautiful" will not be Hollywood's picture!

3)  His timing will be different than ours.  "In its time" will mean He determines when and how...not us.

Listen to Ellie Holcomb in "The Broken Beautiful":

Your love will never change...there's healing in your name.

You can take broken things and make them beautiful.

You took my shame and you walked out of the grave.

So your love can take broken things and make them beautiful.

 

So whatever may be broken in your life and mine, know that He is working, that we can trust Him to do the right thing and in the right time.  I can be patient if I know the burden is His and not mine.

 

For further study:  Genesis 1-2, 2 Chron 20:20,  Psalm 31:15, Psalm 62:8, Isaiah 55:8-9, Romans 8:28, Ephesians 2:10, Colossians 1:16, 1 Tim. 4:4, 1 Peter 3:4

 

May God bless you in the understanding of His word.

 

Love,

Holly