These are the most popular words from Ecclesiastes. You’ll hear them at funerals, Christian and non-Christian alike. Since the late sixties, The Byrds etched into our culture the first eight verses with their famous hit: “To everything turn turn turn.” Last Tuesday, I was reading chapter 3 while Abbi was at bouldering practice. A lady peaked over and said, “Those verses are real life.”

Perhaps that’s what draws people to them—real life. Chapter 3 also repeats a word that speaks to the limitations we feel in life—“time.” “Where does time go?” we say. “Man, time flies.” “If I just had more time.” We’re all bound by time. That fits how Ecclesiastes opened with vanity/breath. We feel the fleeting nature of life under the sun. The clock is always ticking in this world that groans.

But the Preacher also discovered (in his quest) that life is gift. Food, drink, work—everything is “from the hand of God.” God wants us to enjoy his world as gift. Time, then, is full of occasions when we’re stretched between groaning and gift. How should we think about all that life hurls our way? How does God relate to all that comes to us in time? What does that mean for how we spend the time we have left?

In verses 1-15, we’ll find the answer goes something like this: whatever times God appoints, enjoy good and fear God. Let’s read it together, beginning in 3:1…

¹ For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: ² a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; ³ a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; ⁴ a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; ⁵ a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; ⁶ a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; ⁷ a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; ⁸ a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. ⁹ What gain has the worker from his toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹² I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; ¹³ also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man. ¹⁴ I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. ¹⁵ That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

Our passage starts with a poem in verses 1-8. The Preacher then explains the poem in verses 9-11. That leads to two conclusions in verses 12-15, each beginning with the words “I perceived/know.” That structure shapes where we’re going.

The Times We All Face

Let’s begin with the poem of verses 1-8, the times we all face. Hartmut Rosa is a German sociologist. He wrote an intriguing book called, The Uncontrollability of the World.[i] According to Rosa, “the driving cultural force of that form of life we call ‘modern’ is the idea…that we can make the world controllable.”[ii] He starts with the simple illustration of snow. “We cannot manufacture [snow], force it, or even confidently predict it…Take some in your hand, it slips through your fingers. Bring it into the house, it melts away. Pack it away in the freezer, it stops being snow…[Yet] there’s no shortage of efforts to bring snow under our control. Winter resorts advertise ‘guaranteed snow,’ making good on their promise with the aid of machines.”

According to Rosa, Western societies work under a set of assumptions: if we just expand our knowledge of what’s there, make it more accessible and manageable, then the world becomes controllable at every level.[iii] Of course, the result has become a world in which technological advances are hard to keep up with. Higher, faster, farther—run as fast as you want; the escalator is always moving down. To stop is to lose ground. Modernity has an “incessant desire to make the world engineerable, predictable, disposable.”[iv] But here’s the rub, according to Rosa: “From games to love, from snow to death, human life and human experience are defined by uncontrollability.”[v]

Now, Rosa doesn’t approach this subject from a biblical mindset. But what he observes is as old as Ecclesiastes. We trick ourselves into thinking life is controllable, predictable—when really, it’s not. This poem brings us face to face with that reality.

Notice the wide swath of experiences in verses 2-8. Times that gladden like birth, harvest, healing, laughter, dance, embracing, mending, loving, peace. But there are also times like death, killing, breaking down, weeping, mourning, losing, tearing, hating, war. It represents our varied experiences in a world that is both gift and groaning.

Also, by switching between opposites, he’s using a tool called merism—a way of using two opposites to cover everything in between. When we read something like “God created the heavens and the earth,” that implies “and everything in between.” Or “on his law he meditates day and night”—that implies “all the time.” Same here: “a time to be born and a time to die” implies “and everything in between;” “a time to weep and a time to laugh” implies “and all the mixture of emotions in between.” Verse 1 already hinted at this: “For everything there is a season…a time for every matter under heaven.” The poem is sweeping: all that life brings our way.

Now, some have understood these verses as presenting choices we have to make; and it takes wisdom to figure out the right choice for the right time—when to sew and when to tear, when to make war and when to make peace. But that’s not what the poem is getting at. Do you choose when to be born (verse 2)? Do you choose when to weep (verse 4)? Do you choose loss (verse 6)? Also, notice the word “season” in verse 1. The NASB captures the idea more carefully: “there is an appointed time for everything.” The poem isn’t about humans determining this or that; it’s about the times often thrust upon us, quite apart from our input or readiness.

Even the back-and-forth polarities illustrate how life really is. Rejoicing that the pregnancy test showed pink; ten weeks later devastated by miscarriage. Laughing together over dinner with friends; a year later weeping due to betrayal. A country enjoys prosperity and peace; then one leader’s decision finds mothers kissing their sons goodbye as they’re enlisted for war. Thrown back and forth—that’s how the poem reads.

The point is that these times are outside our control. Try as we may to control the outcomes of relationships, to engineer our perfect dreams, to guarantee children won’t go astray, to ensure enough money is there for the budget, to stay healthy and avoid cancer—the truth is, we’re not in charge of all that life hurls at us. Life doesn’t come at us in neat, predictable ways. It throws us back and forth, torn between a world that’s groaning and a world that’s gift.

Even more, the times we all face leave us with a sense of no gain. The opposites cancel one another out. For birth, there’s also death. For laughter, there’s also mourning. For planting, there’s also harvesting. For peace, there’s also war. So, when he asks in verse 9, “What gain has the worker from his toil?” the implied answer is the same that it was in 1:3—nothing. We’re thrown back and forth till time runs out.

Have you accepted this wisdom? Because the underlying assumption of our culture is that with enough resources and education and effort and influence, I can control my circumstances. I can guarantee the results. I can engineer “the good life.” I can protect myself from hurt. Truth is, we can’t. Toil all you want to make it happen; but in the end, you won’t be able to figure it out. The times we face are outside our control.

The Times God Appoints

But they’re not outside God’s control. That brings us to verses 9-11, where he explains the poem. The times we all face are the times God appoints. Verse 1 hinted at this—the times we all face are appointed/determined for us, quite apart from our permission or planning. But in verses 10-11, the Preacher now identifies the one who is above time, the one who’s in control of time. Like I said the other day, the Preacher observes the world from three vantage points: the world as groaning; the world as gift; and (now) the world as God’s. Look at verse 10.

He says, “I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time.” In saying this, Ecclesiastes touches on a doctrine we call providence. The New Dictionary of Theology defines providence like this: “the beneficent outworking of God’s sovereignty whereby all events are directed and disposed to bring about those purposes of glory and good for which the universe was made.” All events directed and disposed.

God didn’t just wind up the clock of our universe and let it go. No, he’s intimately involved with everything. The “everything” in verse 11 points back to the “everything” in verse 1. God is the chief actor in verses 2-8. He’s over life and death, springtime and harvest, laughter and sorrow, mourning and dancing, war and peace—and everything in between. Nothing in your life happens outside his control. Verse 11 says that he even designs a kind of beauty into everything that happens.

Now, on the ground, within the bounds of time, we can’t always see this beauty. We can’t figure out all that God’s doing: “Why are you doing it this way? Why did you put us through this? Why hasn’t my illness gone away? Why didn’t my daughter stay? How could this possibly be part of a good plan?” We long to know. That’s the struggle, isn’t it, in verse 11? “[God] has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

We can only see a few parts, but the whole remains hidden. God has composed a beautiful symphony—and it’ll all make sense in the end—but perhaps right now all we can hear is someone pounding a B-minor. Or, to use a different illustration from Bobby Jamieson: “Your life is a tapestry, but you get to see only the reverse side. You find frayed ends of threads and glimpse muffled blurs. Only the Weaver sees the picture.”[vi]

That might be harder for some to accept. “God keeps it hidden? God makes it so that I can’t figure it out? Why does God do it this way?” Perhaps you’re even tempted to resent him for this? But a few things to remember. One is our creatureliness. We must face what it means to be God’s creatures. He’s in a category by himself. He is above time; he’s not subject to its limitations as we are.

We should also remember our sinfulness. Often, we take what revelation he has given and suppress it, twist it, fail to act on it. God owes us nothing. That he keeps revealing himself to sinners at all shows how patient and merciful he is.

Also, these truths are needed to put us in our place. The nature of sin is to de-god God: “We want control! We can run the world better than God.” But just look where that’s gotten us. The fight to control—to play God instead of submitting to God—has plunged humanity into all kinds of evils. God planted eternity in your heart, yet limits you in time, so that you conclude, “He is God; I am not.”

When we don’t know, it must be enough for us that God knows. When times confound us, we must remember that God’s in control; we are not. Wisdom learns to live inside the limits of not knowing. Not that C. S. Lewis ever made this a point in his Chronicles of Narnia series—but it’d be like Lucy having to trust that C. S. Lewis knows what he’s doing when he has the witch kill Aslan on the stone table.

But even that’s not all we can say. Because the one writing our story also entered it. The very God who is above time—who is transcendent and not bound by time like us—he also entered time on your behalf in the person of Jesus Christ. Galatians 4:4-5 puts it this way: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” Romans 5:6, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.”

In the person of Jesus, God entered your struggle in time. There was a time when he was born, and a time that he died. There was a time when God empowered him to heal and there was a time when he was killed. There was a time when he experienced the disciples’ love, and a time when he experienced the Pharisees’ hatred. There was a time he feasted with sinners and a time he mourned the death of a friend. Some embraced him, others refrained from embracing him.

There were even things that, in his human nature Jesus did not fully know—like “concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” All he needed to know to remain faithful, he knew it. And for the things he didn’t know, it was enough for him that his Father knew. There were times that required him to speak, and there were times that required him to refrain from speaking: “like a lamb led to slaughter, so he opened not his mouth.”

In other words, God isn’t someone who simply tells you these things from outside of time; he gets what you’re going through in time. He entered your struggle in the person of Jesus. And why did he enter that struggle? Hebrews 4:14-16, “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Jesus entered your struggle in time to become your helper through time. How many days do you have left? He’ll be there for all of them. What will life hurl at you this week? There will be grace for you in every moment of time. Jesus put it this way in Matthew 6:17, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life.” What will you gain by being anxious and trying to control the times? Nothing. But you can trust the one who’s above time, who entered time, who now rules time as Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and End. You can trust him who sees all of time, and whose death and resurrection guarantees that all will be beautiful at the end of time.

Think about the times God has appointed for you? The times that have been sweet, as well as the times that have been bitter. Verse 11 covers it all—God has made everything beautiful in its time. We don’t see all that God sees; and that means it’s harder to grasp how there could be a beauty to some of the absurdities we face.

But again, he has not left us without light. Just look at the cross: God makes everything beautiful in its time, even something like the absurdities of the crucifixion of the Son of God. Because of that cross, we gain access to the God above time. Because of that cross, we gain God’s help through time. Because of that cross, we’ll have glorified bodies at the end of time. And because of that cross we learn how to spend the rest of our time here—in submission to God instead of trying to be God.

We’ve all got more changes coming our way in time. Life will keep throwing things at you. Some of the twists and turns you’re not going to understand. How will you spend the time you have left?

Enjoy Good

That brings us to verses 12-15. After reflecting on the times God appoints, the Preacher draws two conclusions, each beginning with the words “I perceived/know.” The first way to spend the days you have left is this: enjoy good. Verse 12, “I know 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.”

That sounds like 2:24, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God.” Seven times in Ecclesiastes we’re told to enjoy the good things God gives. And I have to wonder: are these seven statements about enjoying good recalling the seven times God said in Genesis 1: “and it was good.” Yes, the world is groaning. Yes, you only have so many days left—“as long as they live,” he says. But every day you do have left—they’re all gifts from your Creator. Don’t miss the gifts!

In this context of time, he’s saying, “Don’t miss his gifts in the present by worrying about tomorrow.” From simple things like eating and drinking to bigger things like work—enjoy these now as good gifts from a generous God. He wants you to enjoy them. Have you ever given someone a gift and they receive it with an attitude of, “Eh, thanks. But what I really wanted was.” How much do you think it offends God when we treat his gifts that way? He knows what’s best for us. He gives them for us to enjoy now, fully giving our hearts to them in the present.

Breath, food, drink, homes, children, animals, projects, church members, sunsets, rains, flowers, swirling patterns of burl in a piece of black walnut, my dad’s mesquite smoked Bar-B-Que—all of them are “Here for a limited time only.” Yet they are all good gifts to us within time. Wisdom sees both.

When I was first studying this passage last June, it was shortly after some kids left handprints all over our glass door. And the thought came: when wisdom looks at a dirty glass door, it doesn’t complain about handprints; it enjoys the fact that there are hands. Make your soul see good. Even the mundane things of life are gifts from above.

Notice, he also adds the idea of “doing good”—not just enjoying the good gifts but also doing good to others. Those who enjoy God’s generosity become generous people themselves. Has someone ever surprised you with a gift, and in your joy of receiving it, you say, “Come here, come here! You guys have to try this! It’s just so fun!” or “I can’t wait to share this with so and so!”

That’s how it is when we receive God’s good gifts. He owes us nothing; but he lavishes kindness on us all the time. The life of a Christian is one where we can’t wait to share the good things he’s given to us. The best gift that he’s given is himself in the gospel message. We can’t wait to take what he’s given to us and do good for others. No matter what time brings our way, wisdom learns to enjoy good.

Fear God

Wisdom also fears God—that’s the second way to spend the days you have left. Verse 14, “I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him.”

Whatever God does can’t be changed. You can struggle all you want to control what comes at you, to change the times. But the truth is, your toil can’t change what God has decided. In chapters 1-2, we saw that our work often fails to produce what we desire. Also, it doesn’t last—it goes away when we go away. Verse 14 shows that God’s work endures forever. He always fulfills what he sets out to do. Proverbs 19:21, “Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the LORD that will stand.”

Why does God work this way? Why does God frustrate our work with limits while his work lasts forever? To drive us to himself. To cause us to fear before him. Meaning, we behold him with reverential awe. This fear is not like that of someone who works only because he’s scared silly of punishment. It’s the fear of a child who wants to please his good Father and who finds his judgments perfect, true, and good.

It’s the same “fear of the Lord” that Proverbs calls “the beginning of wisdom.” It’s the same fear of the Lord that Isaiah promised would characterize Christ: “his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord”—Isaiah 11:3. And it’s the same fear of the Lord that God promised in the new covenant: Jeremiah 32:39, “I will give [my people] one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good…”

In life under the sun, wisdom doesn’t mean knowing everything; it means fearing God when you don’t know everything. Instead of acting like we’re in control, it means acknowledging that he’s in control and trusting him with the future.

Verse 15 helps us with this, even if it’s harder to understand. It says, “That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been…” That part is clear. He’s repeating a point he already developed in 1:9—“there is nothing new under the sun.” But then he adds this: “and God seeks what has been driven away.”

One possibility is that he’s recalling the repetitive nature of life under the sun, but now he’s adding that God controls it. We don’t control it; God brings it around again and again and again. Another possibility is final judgment. We can’t control the present. Whether now, or in the future, we’ll keep facing the same old things. But one day God will chase everything down and call the past to account. Or, same scenario, only this time the focus is God seeking what humans once pursued but could never hold onto. He chases down the scattered pieces of our lives and gathers them into a coherent whole.

I’m more inclined to the second view. Verse 17 will soon speak about God’s judgment. And 12:13-14 explain the point of the book by combining the fear of the Lord with final judgment. But in all three views, the primary point is the same: you’re not in charge; and time is in God’s hands.

David Gibson says it well: “In my finite story I’m often left grasping after several different threads and cannot seem to weave them into one coherent whole. My story has broken characters, jarring interruptions, unexpected joys, relationships caught up in unresolved tensions and difficulties. My life story has unexplained contradictions, I have plenty of unanswered questions, and…I have as yet unfinished chapters. But my story is not the story. ‘The story reveals that there will be a time of judgment, and believers trust that judgment will finally prevail.’”[vii] God will make all things right.

I’ve found these truths so liberating. No matter what comes our way, we know what matters most: enjoy good and fear God. I’m not in control of how the next meeting will turn out. I’m not in control of how someone will apply or not apply my counsel. I’m not in control of the losses that might come. I’m not in control of how much longer my insomnia will last. I’m not in control of whether the melanoma will return. I can’t control what tomorrow will bring. Some days I just don’t know what to do next.

But I can rest assured that time is in God’s hands. He’s directing it all; he’s made everything beautiful in its time. Instead of frantically trying to control the outcomes of everything, I’m freed in the present to enjoy good and fear God. Whatever times God appoints, we can enjoy good and fear God. That’s how wisdom teaches us to live.

________

[i] I learned of Rosa’s book in Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough (New York: Waterbrook, 2025), 8.

[ii] Hartmut Rosa, The Uncontrollability of the World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020), 2.

[iii] Rosa, Uncontrollability, 15-17.

[iv] Rosa, Uncontrollability, viii.

[v] Rosa, Uncontrollability, 3-4.

[vi] Jamieson, Everything, 72.

[vii] David Gibson, Living Life Backwards (Wheaton: Crossway, 2017), 59.