| “IN CONSTANT CHANGE, CONSTANT GOD” Ecclesiastes 3:1-14; James 1:2-8, 12, 16-18 Olivet Covenant Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, PA © Rev. Linda Jaymes, 11/1/09 |
To everything, there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” What words of wisdom…what beautiful
poetry…what a profound statement of belief in the sovereignty of God! For Jews and Christians alike, that verse from
Ecclesiastes, penned by King Solomon more than 900 years before Christ was born, has been indelibly written not only in the
Hebrew and Christian Bible, but in most of our minds and hearts. Unfortunately, many of us would have to confess that we
learned it not from the Bible or even from Sunday School teachers but from Simon & Garfunkle. And maybe part of the reason
those words made such an impression on my generation was because their song so accurately reflected that particular “season”
of intense change that took place in the late sixties and early seventies.
But I’m not sure we look back on that era or “season” very fondly. I certainly don’t. I made most of the biggest mistakes
of my life during that era. It was a time when young people were battering down the doors of tradition; a time of political
unrest and government corruption; a time of widespread violence in society and an unpopular war. It was a time of supposedly
“free” love, promiscuous sex and weirdly dressed long-haired “hippies”; a time when psychedelic drugs, communes and those
awful bell bottom pants were popular. Aren’t you glad that the season of the sixties is a thing of the past??!!! Isn’t it
comforting to know that the baby boomers have grown up, moved on and left all of that behind?
Or, perhaps, if you notice my sarcasm here, you may agree that the season we live in today isn’t a whole lot different than
the sixties. Young people still question tradition; we still struggle with corruption and scandal in government; there’s violence in
cities and fear of terrorist plots that may erupt at any time; we are still involved in unpopular wars; young people are still
wearing some pretty strange clothing; people from all classes of society are involved in illegal drugs, and even bell bottoms have
made a minor comeback! It would seem that the familiar saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is
all too true. Life cycles repeat themselves. As we heard in today’s Old Testament lesson, there is a time to be born and a time
to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to weep and a time to laugh, and so on.
These seasons or times are all part of God’s created, natural order, just as summer and winter, seed time and harvest make
up the seasons of every year. The Hebrew word that we translate as “season” is really a word meaning “to be fixed” or
“appointed.” All of these “seasons” are fixed by God. They have a beginning and an end and contain a certain length of days, a
fixed amount of time. Even time itself has been fixed by God, because time is merely a “side-effect” of the creation of the
universe. As I mentioned last week, there was no such thing as time or seasons until God set the stars and planets orbiting in
the heavens, and time became the measure of those orbits. God has fixed or appointed the pattern for this incredible, complex,
exquisite universe and has created us, with our own seasons of life, to inhabit it and wonder at it. We live and move and have
our being within this appointed pattern—a pattern too vast and complicated for us to fully understand it.
Yet one part of the pattern that we understand all too well is that within the life cycle, fixed though it may be, there is
constant change. Nothing stays the same. It’s a paradox that we struggle with because on the one hand, we don’t like
change. Even though it can be very good for us, it’s usually hard. It’s often sad. It’s always a plunge into the unknown. But
we also know that we cannot stop change, because we cannot stop time. We cannot keep things exactly as they are. In fact,
if we think about it, we really wouldn’t want to. There’s a name for that—stagnation—and that leads to death.
The alternative is to accept the fact that whatever season of life we are in it is going to be a season of change—and change
usually leads to challenges. But challenges can be perceived in two different ways. Either we can view the challenges or trials
of each season as problems, or we can see them as opportunities. We can see them negatively, as Solomon was tempted to do;
or positively, as James encouraged his readers to do. In a world fixed and appointed—and to use the Presbyterian term
“predestined,” by God—we still have freedom to make choices about how we understand and interpret our world and our life in
it. We can actually choose what our attitude will be toward the challenges and tests that life brings.
We can look at them like Solomon did and become depressed, as he did when he could not find any meaning or profit or
purpose in the seasons of life. Solomon experienced a longing for eternity that, just like the seasons, God has also fixed in the
hearts of men and women. But he was forever frustrated in his attempts to satisfy that longing, even though he tried
desperately with all the worldly goods at his disposal. But try as he might, all of Solomon’s gold, his stables full of horses, his
palaces, wives and concubines and even his incomparable wisdom could not satisfy his longing for eternity. You see, you can’t
satisfy the eternal with the temporal. Or, as C.S. Lewis so beautifully and philosophically explains it,
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such
a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water. Humans feel sexual desire: well, there is
such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation
is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it…probably earthly pleasures were never
meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” (Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10)
Unfortunately, Solomon did not have the benefit of knowing Christ, Who alone is the answer to our eternal longings, as
well as the Bread of Heaven, Who one day will fully satisfy the longing for eternity that God has set in the hearts of men and
women. But the apostle James did know Christ, and so his approach to the constant changing seasons of life and the trials and
testings brought on by them was very different. Instead of looking at life’s challenges with frustration or allowing them to
depress him, James welcomed them. He advised believers to count it all joy when facing trials of any kind. While Solomon
struggled to find meaning in anything in life, James found meaning in the struggles themselves.
James knew that the Lord, the Eternal One, is waiting at the end of all those struggles, and so getting through those
struggles to the crown of victory has great profit, purpose and meaning. But even more than that, James understood that every
season, every change, every struggle, challenge, and trial is a purpose in itself. Each one presents an opportunity to work,
grow, build our spiritual muscles, become more like Christ and join God in his work in the world. Every challenge and change
in life is our chance to exercise the freedom we have in Christ, the freedom to submit ourselves to God’s will, to surrender to
his purposes, and prepare to one day receive the full satisfaction of our eternal longings. Right now, we experience only a
down payment on eternity through the gift of the Holy Spirit; right now we see as in a mirror, only darkly. But one day, our
desire for eternity will be fully satisfied. We will see our Lord face to face.
And so as we deal with the changing seasons of our lives, I hope we will see them not as problems, but as opportunities.
Opportunities for God to reveal his purposes. Opportunities for us to choose to have the attitude and mind of Christ. To
everything there is a season, and as we know all too well right now, seasons bring changes in the weather. Many of us have
had a lot of changes recently, a lot of interesting and perhaps difficult weather. Some of our members and loved ones have
passed from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, and there’s no bigger change than that. Some are challenged by a
change of lifestyles, moving from independent living to retirement communities with multi-level care. Some are faced with
sending that first child off to college; others with sending that first child to daycare. Some are dealing with changing health;
others with changing jobs or changing family dynamics, such as empty nests.
But I have to believe that these changes and challenges are not outside the will and purpose of God. The hard part is to
trust that these changes, though difficult, are for the good, or at least that God will use them for the good, because that’s the
kind of God we serve. His love and mercy and nature and purposes don’t change, even when everything else seems to. In the
midst of constant change, we have a constant God who will see us through every change and shadow of turning. Change is
never easy, but if we remain faithful and obedient to God, listen for his direction, and work with Him through life’s difficulties,
then in his time He will lead us into his perfect will. Things will turn out all right in the end.
And not only that. We will be the better—the stronger—for having persevered. As the changing seasons propel us toward
the crown of life, our trials and testings serve to strengthen and purify us. God doesn’t send or allow trials into our lives to
make us fall, but to help us fly! In every changing season of our lives, our constant God is with us and is using all those
changes, challenges and trials to help us grow wings. The challenges of life’s seasons are just stages on the way to eternity,
something like the stages of a caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly. And just as it is for the caterpillar, every stage,
every struggle, is necessary for us to become people who are ready to fly and enter into eternity with God.
In a way, we’re really a lot more like caterpillars than we might want to admit. One biology class found that out as they
watched a butterfly begin to break out of its cocoon. First a tiny opening appeared, and then the cocoon began to shake.
Suddenly, tiny antennae emerged, followed by a head and tiny front feet. All day long the class checked on the slow progress
of this emerging insect. By noon, it had freed its listless wings, and they could tell by the colors that it would be a monarch
butterfly. It wiggled and shook, but try as it might, it could not seem to squeeze its fat little body through the tiny opening in
the cocoon. So one student decided to help. He snipped at the opening until the creature plopped out on the table. But only the
top half, the half that had struggled through the tiny opening, looked like a butterfly. The bottom half was large and swollen,
compared to the rest of the creature. The insect crawled about, dragging its listless wings, and a short time later, it died.
The next day, after some research, the biology teacher explained that the butterfly’s struggle to get through the tiny
opening is necessary in order to force fluids from the swollen body into the wings, so they will be strong enough to fly.
Without the struggle, the wings never develop. Without the struggle, the butterfly never reaches the destiny for which God
created it—and I think it is not unreasonable to believe that our struggles serve a very similar purpose.
To everything there is not only a season, but a time for every purpose under heaven. In times of constant change,
Constant God is leading us to discover his purposes and join Him in the work He prepared for us to do, even before the
beginning of time. In spite of constant change, Constant God has set a longing for eternity in our hearts, and given us the
Savior Who will one day, fully satisfy that longing. In the midst of constant change, Constant God is with us, through the body
of Christ, the Church, and by his indwelling Spirit. And regardless of constant change, God’s constant love toward us in Jesus
Christ keeps us safe until He comes again. In the meantime, He calls us to serve him with courage and boldness, and to come
to this Table He has prepared, where we may be nourished in this season of eternity, in remembrance of Him.
Let us pray.
poetry…what a profound statement of belief in the sovereignty of God! For Jews and Christians alike, that verse from
Ecclesiastes, penned by King Solomon more than 900 years before Christ was born, has been indelibly written not only in the
Hebrew and Christian Bible, but in most of our minds and hearts. Unfortunately, many of us would have to confess that we
learned it not from the Bible or even from Sunday School teachers but from Simon & Garfunkle. And maybe part of the reason
those words made such an impression on my generation was because their song so accurately reflected that particular “season”
of intense change that took place in the late sixties and early seventies.
But I’m not sure we look back on that era or “season” very fondly. I certainly don’t. I made most of the biggest mistakes
of my life during that era. It was a time when young people were battering down the doors of tradition; a time of political
unrest and government corruption; a time of widespread violence in society and an unpopular war. It was a time of supposedly
“free” love, promiscuous sex and weirdly dressed long-haired “hippies”; a time when psychedelic drugs, communes and those
awful bell bottom pants were popular. Aren’t you glad that the season of the sixties is a thing of the past??!!! Isn’t it
comforting to know that the baby boomers have grown up, moved on and left all of that behind?
Or, perhaps, if you notice my sarcasm here, you may agree that the season we live in today isn’t a whole lot different than
the sixties. Young people still question tradition; we still struggle with corruption and scandal in government; there’s violence in
cities and fear of terrorist plots that may erupt at any time; we are still involved in unpopular wars; young people are still
wearing some pretty strange clothing; people from all classes of society are involved in illegal drugs, and even bell bottoms have
made a minor comeback! It would seem that the familiar saying that “the more things change, the more they stay the same” is
all too true. Life cycles repeat themselves. As we heard in today’s Old Testament lesson, there is a time to be born and a time
to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot; a time to weep and a time to laugh, and so on.
These seasons or times are all part of God’s created, natural order, just as summer and winter, seed time and harvest make
up the seasons of every year. The Hebrew word that we translate as “season” is really a word meaning “to be fixed” or
“appointed.” All of these “seasons” are fixed by God. They have a beginning and an end and contain a certain length of days, a
fixed amount of time. Even time itself has been fixed by God, because time is merely a “side-effect” of the creation of the
universe. As I mentioned last week, there was no such thing as time or seasons until God set the stars and planets orbiting in
the heavens, and time became the measure of those orbits. God has fixed or appointed the pattern for this incredible, complex,
exquisite universe and has created us, with our own seasons of life, to inhabit it and wonder at it. We live and move and have
our being within this appointed pattern—a pattern too vast and complicated for us to fully understand it.
Yet one part of the pattern that we understand all too well is that within the life cycle, fixed though it may be, there is
constant change. Nothing stays the same. It’s a paradox that we struggle with because on the one hand, we don’t like
change. Even though it can be very good for us, it’s usually hard. It’s often sad. It’s always a plunge into the unknown. But
we also know that we cannot stop change, because we cannot stop time. We cannot keep things exactly as they are. In fact,
if we think about it, we really wouldn’t want to. There’s a name for that—stagnation—and that leads to death.
The alternative is to accept the fact that whatever season of life we are in it is going to be a season of change—and change
usually leads to challenges. But challenges can be perceived in two different ways. Either we can view the challenges or trials
of each season as problems, or we can see them as opportunities. We can see them negatively, as Solomon was tempted to do;
or positively, as James encouraged his readers to do. In a world fixed and appointed—and to use the Presbyterian term
“predestined,” by God—we still have freedom to make choices about how we understand and interpret our world and our life in
it. We can actually choose what our attitude will be toward the challenges and tests that life brings.
We can look at them like Solomon did and become depressed, as he did when he could not find any meaning or profit or
purpose in the seasons of life. Solomon experienced a longing for eternity that, just like the seasons, God has also fixed in the
hearts of men and women. But he was forever frustrated in his attempts to satisfy that longing, even though he tried
desperately with all the worldly goods at his disposal. But try as he might, all of Solomon’s gold, his stables full of horses, his
palaces, wives and concubines and even his incomparable wisdom could not satisfy his longing for eternity. You see, you can’t
satisfy the eternal with the temporal. Or, as C.S. Lewis so beautifully and philosophically explains it,
“Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such
a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well there is such a thing as water. Humans feel sexual desire: well, there is
such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation
is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it…probably earthly pleasures were never
meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.” (Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10)
Unfortunately, Solomon did not have the benefit of knowing Christ, Who alone is the answer to our eternal longings, as
well as the Bread of Heaven, Who one day will fully satisfy the longing for eternity that God has set in the hearts of men and
women. But the apostle James did know Christ, and so his approach to the constant changing seasons of life and the trials and
testings brought on by them was very different. Instead of looking at life’s challenges with frustration or allowing them to
depress him, James welcomed them. He advised believers to count it all joy when facing trials of any kind. While Solomon
struggled to find meaning in anything in life, James found meaning in the struggles themselves.
James knew that the Lord, the Eternal One, is waiting at the end of all those struggles, and so getting through those
struggles to the crown of victory has great profit, purpose and meaning. But even more than that, James understood that every
season, every change, every struggle, challenge, and trial is a purpose in itself. Each one presents an opportunity to work,
grow, build our spiritual muscles, become more like Christ and join God in his work in the world. Every challenge and change
in life is our chance to exercise the freedom we have in Christ, the freedom to submit ourselves to God’s will, to surrender to
his purposes, and prepare to one day receive the full satisfaction of our eternal longings. Right now, we experience only a
down payment on eternity through the gift of the Holy Spirit; right now we see as in a mirror, only darkly. But one day, our
desire for eternity will be fully satisfied. We will see our Lord face to face.
And so as we deal with the changing seasons of our lives, I hope we will see them not as problems, but as opportunities.
Opportunities for God to reveal his purposes. Opportunities for us to choose to have the attitude and mind of Christ. To
everything there is a season, and as we know all too well right now, seasons bring changes in the weather. Many of us have
had a lot of changes recently, a lot of interesting and perhaps difficult weather. Some of our members and loved ones have
passed from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, and there’s no bigger change than that. Some are challenged by a
change of lifestyles, moving from independent living to retirement communities with multi-level care. Some are faced with
sending that first child off to college; others with sending that first child to daycare. Some are dealing with changing health;
others with changing jobs or changing family dynamics, such as empty nests.
But I have to believe that these changes and challenges are not outside the will and purpose of God. The hard part is to
trust that these changes, though difficult, are for the good, or at least that God will use them for the good, because that’s the
kind of God we serve. His love and mercy and nature and purposes don’t change, even when everything else seems to. In the
midst of constant change, we have a constant God who will see us through every change and shadow of turning. Change is
never easy, but if we remain faithful and obedient to God, listen for his direction, and work with Him through life’s difficulties,
then in his time He will lead us into his perfect will. Things will turn out all right in the end.
And not only that. We will be the better—the stronger—for having persevered. As the changing seasons propel us toward
the crown of life, our trials and testings serve to strengthen and purify us. God doesn’t send or allow trials into our lives to
make us fall, but to help us fly! In every changing season of our lives, our constant God is with us and is using all those
changes, challenges and trials to help us grow wings. The challenges of life’s seasons are just stages on the way to eternity,
something like the stages of a caterpillar on its way to becoming a butterfly. And just as it is for the caterpillar, every stage,
every struggle, is necessary for us to become people who are ready to fly and enter into eternity with God.
In a way, we’re really a lot more like caterpillars than we might want to admit. One biology class found that out as they
watched a butterfly begin to break out of its cocoon. First a tiny opening appeared, and then the cocoon began to shake.
Suddenly, tiny antennae emerged, followed by a head and tiny front feet. All day long the class checked on the slow progress
of this emerging insect. By noon, it had freed its listless wings, and they could tell by the colors that it would be a monarch
butterfly. It wiggled and shook, but try as it might, it could not seem to squeeze its fat little body through the tiny opening in
the cocoon. So one student decided to help. He snipped at the opening until the creature plopped out on the table. But only the
top half, the half that had struggled through the tiny opening, looked like a butterfly. The bottom half was large and swollen,
compared to the rest of the creature. The insect crawled about, dragging its listless wings, and a short time later, it died.
The next day, after some research, the biology teacher explained that the butterfly’s struggle to get through the tiny
opening is necessary in order to force fluids from the swollen body into the wings, so they will be strong enough to fly.
Without the struggle, the wings never develop. Without the struggle, the butterfly never reaches the destiny for which God
created it—and I think it is not unreasonable to believe that our struggles serve a very similar purpose.
To everything there is not only a season, but a time for every purpose under heaven. In times of constant change,
Constant God is leading us to discover his purposes and join Him in the work He prepared for us to do, even before the
beginning of time. In spite of constant change, Constant God has set a longing for eternity in our hearts, and given us the
Savior Who will one day, fully satisfy that longing. In the midst of constant change, Constant God is with us, through the body
of Christ, the Church, and by his indwelling Spirit. And regardless of constant change, God’s constant love toward us in Jesus
Christ keeps us safe until He comes again. In the meantime, He calls us to serve him with courage and boldness, and to come
to this Table He has prepared, where we may be nourished in this season of eternity, in remembrance of Him.
Let us pray.
