The head of my postgrad ministry recently gave a wonderful talk on Ecclesiastes 3:9-13. During my week away from work, I have spent time with the passage and have found it very encouraging. I hope my reflections on it prove helpful to others at a time of year when many of us are looking forward to changes and new challenges!
‘What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with.’
In this time of rest, I thank you for the busyness of life! I often find life overwhelming, but many struggle with loneliness and directionless instead. Thank you for the crush of life: for activity, colour and variety, for friends, for family and relationships, for comings and goings, for bustles and burdens. You gave us this busyness and you are in it all—you are our reward.
Thank you for the work you have done through me: Bible studies written, evenings of service at the church, prayers for struggling friends, meals cooked for church ministries. This toil blesses others, but it also blesses me: it keeps me humble, it softens my heart, and it strengthens my thoughtfulness towards others—a muscle that needs constant use to prevent atrophy!
But thank you also for work done in my ‘day job’: chapters written, books read, essays graded. Sometimes I struggle to understand what all this ‘earthly’ toil amounts to, but I know the gifts you have given me, and I know the joy of using them—of working diligently to your glory.
‘He has made everything beautiful in its time.’
In its time…thank you for this chapter and for the unique challenges and joys it brings. Help me not look regretfully at the past or longingly at the future, but dwell with you here in the present. Life really does come in seasons, and there is sadness in watching each end. Help me to trust that you are the source of all life, and though seasons go, they come as well. You have already planned the next season for us and will dwell with us there.
Help me to understand that there are different kinds of beauty in each season and each bears different fruit: delicate slivers of grass and majestic, soaring oaks; verdant bushes, laden with diaphanous roses and waxy succulents with tough skin and a lone, hard-won blossom. Whatever life this season brings, help me be grateful for it, and see the beauty in what you have given.
‘Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart,’
Eternity! This is the greatest news of all: there will be a season that never ends, and it is good to long for it as leaves chance and we wait for the next bloom. You are our constancy, our ‘ever fix’d mark’.
‘yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.’
This is a welcome reminder in the academy where knowledge reigns supreme: there are things I will never understand, because God is far too big for me to comprehend. I don’t have all the answers about you, but you have all the answers about me!
‘I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.’
Thank you God for your blessings throughout all seasons: the good things of life are not accidents but reveal your generous character and your love for us. Help us to accept them. In times of rest and non-busyness, I often feel anxious about things I can’t control. Please help me understand that none of your blessings were ever earned or ever could be. Help me be a child, reliant on you and trusting in both work and rest, humbly accepting the blessings of today without worrying about yesterday or tomorrow.
Alleluia, all I have is Christ!
- Why do a PhD? Because God has a plan… - August 30, 2021
- Aesthetic Experience During Lockdown: Art and Hope - June 21, 2021
- A Prayer for the Year - June 22, 2020
