Sunday 10 • 06 • 19

Our study in the book of Ecclesiastes brings us today to Ecclesiastes 3. The scripture passage in your bulletin is actually from last week, so we're going to instead read the one on the wall behind me. As we've been doing for the last six months, we're going to read this out loud in unison together so that we hide God's word in our hearts.

If you will join me as we read this out loud, ready? Three, two, one, go.

For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to break down and a time to build up. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to seek, and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away, a time to tear and a time to sow, a time to keep silence and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war, and a time for peace. 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. 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. I perceive 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, take pleasure in all his toil. This is God's gift to man. I perceive 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. That which is already has been, that which is to be already has been, and God seeks what was driven away. Moreover, I saw under the sun that in the place of justice, even there was wickedness and in the place of righteousness, even there was wickedness. I said in my heart, God will judge the righteous and the wicked, for there is a time for every matter and for every work. So the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all. For man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. — Ecclesiastes 3:1-17

Would you join me in prayer? Father, we pray that you would open our hearts as we open your word. Father, there's nothing like your word. We pray, Father, these are heavy words for us this morning. We pray, Father, that you would meet us by your power. We pray that as we leave this place today, we would go away saying, surely we have been with the Lord. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

I don't know if you had this temptation, but as we read through the first part of that passage, I know that some of you know the song by the Byrds, "Turn, Turn, Turn." So like, every line you want to sing as we go—"there's a time to embrace"—and you're like, "turn, turn, turn." If you don't know what I'm talking about, either you're really young or just out of it. But this is one of the most well-known passages in all of the Old Testament. In fact, you'll find this passage is read more than any other passage at funerals of people who are not Christians than anything else in the Old Testament. So it's incredibly well known. I think it's also incredibly misunderstood, but it's also incredibly timely for us because if there is one thing that we don't have enough of, it's time.

I know if I went around and asked you, "If you could add two more hours in the day or 5% more to your paycheck, which would you choose?" Most people would choose, "I want more time. I am running. I never have enough time to do the things I want to do, to spend time with the people I care about, to give myself to the things that are really important to me." Don't we feel really out of time all the time?

And notice in our culture, we even talk about time in monetary terms. We talk about spending time. We talk about wasting time. We view time as a scarce commodity. I had a friend who went over to Ethiopia on a mission trip and he came back with this conversation that he shared with me. He said, "It's interesting. One of the Ethiopian men I was interacting with was admiring my watch. He said, 'You know, you Americans, you have the watch, but Ethiopians, we have the time.'"

We're world renowned for being busy. I ask you how you're doing right now, and almost all of you give the same answer: "Busy. It's just such a busy season." And that's what you said about the last one and the one before that and the one before that. And that's what you're going to be saying three months from now.

It seems like it's always a busy season. "I'm so busy" is, I think, more than a statement about our time. I think in some ways we equate that with a badge of honor. Like, I'm doing important things. I have a lot to do. I'm just stacked right now. And it makes us feel necessary and important.

But listen to this. This is from his book, The Busy Trap. An author named Tim Crider writes this. He says:

Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously, your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you're so busy, if you're completely booked, if you're in demand every hour of the day.

And then here's the kicker. This is what he says:

I can't help but wonder whether all this exhaustion isn't a way of covering up the fact that most of what we do doesn't matter.

I mean, aren't you like, ugh. It's like getting punched in the gut. Aren't we afraid of that? We're so busy, but is what we do—does it matter?

As we turn this morning to Ecclesiastes 3, we need to hear a fresh word about time from Kohelet, from the teacher who has wisdom to share about how we view our time. So we're gonna look at this under three headings: discerning the Lord, discerning the times, and enjoying your life.

Discerning the Lord

Ecclesiastes 3 gives us this really strange, enigmatic statement. Did you hear this in verse 11?

He has put eternity into men's hearts.

God has put eternity into us. We are hardwired to think of, to view our lives, to have desires that are eternal desires. This is why I think our songs are filled with words about a love that will last forever. This is why we have children's stories that all end with the same refrain: "They lived happily ever after." We have this sense that this should go on forever and it should be great and eternity is built into us—that we should have a love that will never ever end.

And here's the kicker. We have eternity in our hearts and yet we are stuck in time.

I want you to try this exercise this week. Just try to have a conversation with someone who's a friend, somebody close to you, someone who cares a lot about you, and try to have a conversation about your longings, your desires, or your fears without talking about time. You can't do it. All of the way we think, the way we imagine ourselves and understand our lives is time-based. It's framed by time.

And do you see what the collision course is here? If we have eternity in our hearts and you have a short runway for those eternal desires, those longings, that sense of like this should be forever—that is a collision course. That is rife with frustration. And this is what the teacher is showing us. You have eternity in your hearts and yet there's a season for everything. There's a time. We live in time.

And this means for us very simply: time becomes your enemy. Time becomes your enemy. This is something you fight against.

I find that we have kind of two tendencies as people, and no one's neatly one or the other. Everybody's both. But some of us are more future-oriented and some of us are more past-oriented. Let me give examples about how both view time as an enemy.

The more future-oriented of us view time as an enemy to be conquered. So you have your planner. You know what's coming down the pike. You have a to-do list and you have lists of your to-do lists and you have planned out your future. You know what's coming. You're good at multitasking because time is to be conquered. You gotta fill it up. You gotta get ahead. And yet, who feels like they're winning that battle? Don't we always get caught by stuff and we're like, "Oh, I'm double-scheduled. Oh, I didn't see that coming. Oh, I'm running out of time." Like, the future-oriented of us feel like time is an enemy to be conquered.

Others of us—or maybe the same group in another way—we see this battle with time in the future through worry. Worry is meditating on the future that you can't control. So you're anxious, you're projecting, you're thinking ahead, you're anticipating that conversation, that conflict, that event. And time is an enemy. It's gonna bring stuff on you that you are not prepared for.

Also, those of us who are more past-oriented, time is also an enemy. You go to your high school reunion and you look around and the people who were in school with you that you thought, "I'm gonna be way ahead of them"—you seem to just be behind in life. You look at your life and you're filled with regret. You have weight. You look at your wasted years. What was I doing? Why am I not where I thought I was gonna be?

You know, one of the writers who most captures the Ecclesiastes-ness of our current moment is Cormac McCarthy.

He's written a bunch of westerns and a couple of futuristic books. In No Country for Old Men, in both the movie and the book version, there's a conversation that happens between the sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, and his older mentor Ellis. Ellis is retired, and the sheriff goes to visit him. They're sort of complaining together about the way the world is becoming more violent, complaining about things that just didn't work out. And this is what Ellis tells him:

"All the time you spent trying to get back what's been took from you, more is just going out the door. After a while, you gotta just try and get a tourniquet on it."

Now, a tourniquet is a bandage that you put on a very severe injury to keep from complete blood loss. You get this before you get amputated. You put a tourniquet on your arm. It's really serious, but the sense is like everything's just flowing out. You gotta put a tourniquet on it. And don't we feel that way about life sometimes? We're just bleeding out. It's just going away. I can't even get it back. All this time you're trying to get back what's been took from you, more is going out the door. Just hope you can get a tourniquet on it.

But see, the teacher is showing this for a purpose. Remember, he's not just coming as a cynic. He's got a point. And this is what the point of this is. He's showing us this collision: eternity in our hearts, limited runway, eternal desires, and yet we're stuck in time. So what do we do with that frustration? What do we do with time as an enemy?

God is the Lord of Time

And this is what he says. Verse 14, this is where he's taking us:

I perceive that whatever God does endure forever, nothing can be added to it, nothing taken away from it. God has done it so that people fear before him. — Ecclesiastes 3:14

What an odd statement—that people would fear before him. That word in the Old Testament has the connotations of reverence. God is the God of time. God has all times in his hands. This is what he's saying: if this is a way of wisdom, if you begin to see the eternity in our hearts and limited runway, it should bring you to your knees before the God who has all things in his hands, who is the God of all time.

Now, this is the key of wisdom: discerning the Lord, discerning the Lord of time. Do you see that God is in charge of all things? Does it humble you? Does it make you wake up? Does it make you look at your life and examine how you've been living? Does it make you think? That's where Koheleth takes us, the teacher.

And see, as we've been doing throughout this series, Koheleth the teacher keeps asking the questions, but we find the rabbi gives us the answers. And Rabbi Jesus takes it even a step further. He's not just saying, "Hey, there's a Lord of time. You should go deal with the Lord of time." Instead, in John chapter eight, there's this weird conversation about time.

Jesus is being confronted by the Jewish people who are trying to figure out who he is and what he's about. This is what they say to him. He says to them first:

If anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death. — John 8:51

And they're like, "What are you talking about, Jesus?" They ask the question: "Are you greater than our father Abraham who died and the prophets who died? Who do you make yourself out to be?"

Jesus answers:

Your father Abraham, two thousand years ago, he rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. — John 8:56

So the Jews said to him, "You're not even 50 years old and you've seen Abraham?"

And Jesus said to them:

Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. — John 8:58

And then they pick up rocks to try to kill him for saying that.

Now listen to what Jesus is saying. He is not simply saying, "I'm over 2,000 years old." He's not simply saying, "Before Abraham was, I was," which would have been a mind blower for them at that moment. That would have been odd. Instead, he is invoking the Old Testament revealed name for God. The name that God who appeared in a burning bush before Moses—fifteen hundred years before Jesus—God reveals himself to Moses. Moses asked, "Who are you?" And God says:

I am that I am. My name is Yahweh. I am pre-created. I'm uncaused. I am the prime mover of all things.

He's got this timeless name. And here Jesus—this is why the Jews wanted to kill him, and why when we listen to this, we're like, "No wonder why they picked up rocks." Because Jesus is making this statement: "Before Abraham was, I am." This is the greatest of all the "I am" statements of the Bible. There are other ones like, "I'm the good shepherd," "I'm the bread of life," "I'm the light of the world." But this one is not about what he does. This is about who Jesus is.

Now, if the cults ever come to your door and say, "Hey, you know what? Jesus never claimed to be God"—this is as bold and as big as it gets.

Jesus says, "I am that I am." That's why the Jews tried to kill him. If he was just saying, "I've been around for a while," they wouldn't have tried to kill him. But he's saying, "I am uncreated, uncaused, the prime mover of all things." And this is where the rabbi responds to what the teacher says, because the teacher says, "Hey, deal with the Lord of the universe." Jesus says, "I am the Lord of the universe, and I stepped into your time. I am the Lord of all time who comes into your time."

And this is bizarre. Here's the universal human condition: frustration, eternal desires, limited time. Time is the enemy. And if you are not a Christian, this is what your life will be. It will always be subject to that frustration. It will always be about, "I never have enough time to do the things I want." Your desires for this life—you will die full of regrets, full of lost causes, full of things that you didn't get to. Time is your enemy.

But if you are a Christian, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of all time has stepped into time for you. Therefore, eternity is not just in your hearts, it's on your calendar. You will live forever with me.

The Age of Human Life

Now let me show you this slide. This is a slide put together by an evolutionary scientist about the age of our planet. If you look at this as a big clock, where did human life appear if you set our entire planet's life on a big timetable?

You start at the beginning: formation of Earth, meteorite bombardment, origin of life, oldest fossils, abundant banded iron formations, single-celled algae, sexual reproduction, seaweeds, jellyfish, land plants, coal swamps, dinosaurs, mammals, and humans.

So if you set our planet's history according to evolutionary science on a clock, humans appear at 11:58 and forty-three seconds PM. The last one minute and twelve seconds of all of this planet's history. Kind of mind-boggling, right?

Now I don't know about that. I'm just going to say, I don't know about that, but I know about this: I'm going to flip this illustration on its head. Let's say this is all of human life right here. Let's say you're seventy-eight years on this planet, or eighty-one years, or ninety-two years, or seventy-one years, or sixty-five years—whatever the number is that God knows that you don't know.

In the light of all eternity, that seventy-eight years is going to seem something like one minute and twelve seconds. And this is what your life looks forward to if you're an eternal being—like you're just getting started. You are just getting started. And there will come a point in eternity when you're like, "That one minute and twelve seconds—seventy-eight years, man—that is nothing compared to an eternity with the Lord Jesus Christ."

I mean, doesn't that blow your gasket this morning? I have a hard time even understanding the concept of eternity. But if you're a Christian, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, eternity is not just in your hearts, it's on your calendar. It is on your calendar. You have forever with the Lord. Forever with the Lord.

Can you discern the Lord? Do you discern the Lord in your time? The Lord of time, the one who stepped into time for you.

Discerning the Time

Second point: Let's discern the time. Listen to the poem that we read here in verses one through seven. It's an interesting piece of classic Hebrew poetry.

English poetry is characterized a lot of the time by rhyme and meter. Hebrew poetry is very different. Hebrew poetry is characterized by balance and repetition. And so you get this in this poem. It's a perfect example of Hebrew poetry:

There's a time to kill. There's a time to heal. There's a time to gather stones. There's a time to cast stones. There's a time to plant. There's a time for reaping. — Ecclesiastes 3:1-7

There's this balance back and forth throughout. And a lot of people who looked at this said it seems to be saying that there are two general things going on in life. There are disquiets—things that make you upset—and there are delights. There's the good and the bad. And in life, there's a season for both.

And the main point is really, really simple. You didn't have to go to seminary for this one.

The main point of that poem is, can you tell the time? Can you discern the time? There are times that are appropriate to all those things. Remember, Ecclesiastes is a wisdom book in the Bible. A wisdom book is not a book of commandments. This is do this, don't do this, do this. Wisdom is about how to live rightly. It means knowing what is the right thing to do at the right time.

So those of you who have kids or have worked in our kids classes, you know this, that there you have to tell kids. They're immature. There's a time to burp. There's a time not to burp. Like, I mean, there's a time and a place for picking your nose. There's a time and a place for not picking your nose, and there's never a time and place for eating it. Those are the things immaturity. Here's the point: wisdom is knowing the right time for the right thing. So the right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing. That's what wisdom is.

See, commandments are about right and wrong. Wisdom is about the right thing at the right time. If it's the wrong time, it's the wrong thing. This concept then means time is to be discerned. It's to be asked like, what time is it? What is time for? What is this about? And if you're a Christian, remember, time is not your enemy anymore. It's something to be discerned. It's something to be understood.

We see this over and over in the life of Jesus. One of the things, if you go back and read the gospels, you would find about Jesus is Jesus is never in a hurry. I mean, everybody else seems to think Jesus is running late. And he's like, nope, not running late. This is exactly the time that I meant to be here. This is I have purpose for every moment. Jesus discerns the time. Jesus kept his own time. Jesus is always on time because he discerned the time.

Let me show you this. This is repeated over and over in the gospels in the way he talks. So John chapter two, Jesus is at the wedding in Cana. His mom comes to him. Hey, would you do something about the wine running out? He says:

Woman, this is not my time. — John 2

Then in John chapter four, the Samaritan woman, they're having this conversation. He says:

Believe me, the hour is coming when you worship the father neither on the mountain or in Jerusalem, but the hour is coming and is now here. — John 4

Again, talking about time. John five, to the Jews:

Verily, truly, I tell you the hour is coming and is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the son of God. — John 5

Jesus to the Jews in John seven:

My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. — John 7

People are scratching their heads. John 12:

The hour has come for the son of man to be glorified, and now my soul is troubled. What should I say? My father, save me from this hour? No. It is for this reason I have come to this hour. — John 12

See, Jesus is always saying, not that time. Right time. Nope. Not that time. It's not my yes. This is my hour. Like, you hear him going back and forth with his words over and over in the gospels making these statements.

And Jesus tells us that this is actually part of discipleship too. Over and over in his teaching, he said, you need to be able to understand the time. You gotta be able to tell time. The bridesmaids, get your lamps ready because the groom is coming. Servants, you need to be ready for when the feast starts. He tells his disciples, don't you know you don't you guys know how to tell the weather? You can walk outside and say, it's raining or snowing, but you can't tell the time. What is his rebuke? He says, this is part of discipleship, being able to discern the time.

Chronos and Kairos

Now, in Greek, there are two words for time. We have one in English, but there are two words: chronos and kairos. Let me explain what both these are. You don't have to remember the names, but I want you to remember the concepts.

Chronos is the type of time we think about all the time. What appears on your calendar? Hours, days, months, weeks, years, seasons. That's how you schedule. That's what appears in your calendar. It's where we get our word chronicle from, or chronology, or we get the word chronic. It's the time of the clock and the calendar and it is time that is always marching on. There's never enough of it. It's the I'm too busy. It's the like, I'm always kind of behind with this.

Chronos, actually, the word comes from a name for a minor deity in the Greek pantheon of gods. There's this minor deity who was famous for being this old man who's gobbling up his children. In fact, there are a couple of paintings of this that I couldn't put on the screen because they're a little bit too graphic for this morning.

And one is by Francisco Goya, and it shows this wild eyed man with his mouth open and a bloody stump of a person he's shoving in his mouth. Another is by Peter Paul Rubens and it shows him his son is in his arms and he's leaning over to bite the child's chest, tear it open, and the son is looking back in agony. And it's a picture of what time, Kronos time is like. It's always gobbling. It's always consuming. There's never enough of it. And if you live only by Kronos time, you are gonna be exhausted, you're gonna be filled with regrets, and life is going to be driven for you.

Kairos: Time as Gift

But there's another kind of time. This is a word that Jesus uses a lot. John seven, lots of other places, Kairos. This is time as gift, time as opportunity, time as season, time pregnant with purpose. This is, as we read here, to everything, there is a time. There is a season. It's not asking the question, what time is it, but what is time for? What is this time for?

When Jesus discerned Kairos from Kronos, he was demonstrating that time is not an enemy for the Christian, it's to be figured out, it's to be discerned. And to discern the time is for Christians to live wise, ready, unhurried lives with God. Wise, unhurried lives with God before him.

What that means is to be a follower of Jesus means to start to ask more questions, to discern the times, to say, you know, this day, this hour, this moment—each is ripe for something. Play or work or sleep, being with someone, each moment—what do we read here?

He makes everything beautiful in its time. — Ecclesiastes 3

God has all the time. If you're a follower of Christ, He has given you this time. Do you know what to do with it?

Three Ways to Discern Kairos Time

First, you make plans with open hands. Doesn't mean you throw out your calendar. You don't throw out your calendar this afternoon, but you make plans with open hands. Did you hear what we read from Ecclesiastes nine?

Man does not know his time. Like a fish taken in a net, like birds caught in a snare, children of men are snared in evil time when it suddenly falls upon them. — Ecclesiastes 9

You don't know. You don't know your days. You have no idea. God knows your number. How many years do you have? How many days you have? He knows he knows exactly down to the second. Do you make plans with open hands? Are you open to God's disruptions in your life knowing that even God's disruptions are better than your intentions?

This isn't a call, everybody go sell your house, buy a van, and become a dirtbagger. Not throw out all time. But are you open? Are you driven by Kronos time? Are you open to his disruptions?

Brennan Manning wrote this. He said: "We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God. It is a strange fact that Christians and even ministers frequently consider their work so important, so urgent that they will allow nothing to disturb them. They think they're doing God a service, but this is actually disdaining God's crooked but straight path. It is part of the discipline of humility that we must not spare our hand where it can perform service, and we don't assume that our schedule is our own to manage, but we allow it to be arranged by God."

Are you open to his disruptions? Are you planning with open hands?

Second, you waste time in wise ways. You learn to waste time in wise ways. We raise our kids in this country to be efficient, productive. Let's get stuff done. Did you get your homework done? Did you go to soccer practice? Do we teach our kids and do we live ourselves where we waste time in the right ways?

Gustavo Gutierrez writes this: "The Christian life must include useless, wasted time for spirituality, periods in which we have no other agenda except for just to be with God."

What a waste. What a waste. Ditto for people that society considers useless. Do you think it's okay to waste time with children? People with special needs, the elderly, people who don't have the resources that you do. For Jesus, that's Kairos. Those are golden moments. But we're so busy. Do we waste time in the right way?

Finally, do you speak to the Lord about your time? You ask him for help. This week during staff meeting, Russell McCutcheon brought a devotion from the great Howard Thurman, and I love the way Thurman asks God for wisdom about his time. This is what Thurman prays:

"Lord, I need your sense of time. Always, I have an undying anxiety about things. Sometimes, I am in a hurry to achieve my ends, and I am completely without patience. It's hard for me to realize that some growth is slow and that all processes are not swift."

I cannot always discriminate between what takes time to develop, what can be rushed, because my sense of time is dulled. I measure things in terms of happenings. Oath to understand the meaning of perspective, that I may do all things with a profound sense of leisure time. Then he says, I need thy sense of the future. Teach me to know that life is ever on the side of the future. Keep me alive to the forward look, the high hope, the onward surge. Let me not be frozen either by the past or by the present. Grant me, oh patient father, thy sense of the future, without which all life would be stricken and die. Amen.

Man, I love that prayer. Are you asking the Lord about your time? Are you asking Him to help you order your time, your future? We have to grow in discerning the time, in being able to say, what is mine to do for today? Because I get the sense that all of us have lists of all kinds of things we think we're supposed to be doing that are maybe not the things the Lord has told us to do. Is that yours to do? Is that yours to do today? Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do at the right time. The right thing at the wrong time is the wrong thing.

Choose Joy

Finally, third, and last here: choose joy. Were you surprised by this as we read this passage aloud together? His summary in verses twelve and thirteen is just so bizarre to me.

I perceive that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and do good as long as they live. Also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. That is God's gift to man. — Ecclesiastes 12:12-13

Now, isn't that bizarre? I mean, don't you expect this is a "life is sucks and then you die" passage? Don't you expect it's just meaningless? Instead it's like, go have a party. Go have a party. Isn't that bizarre?

Some of you may recognize actually that phrase: "eat and drink and be merry." Anybody know that one? Right? Epicurus, first century philosopher, really popular in Jesus' day. Like, life is absurd, so party your way out. Right? You're going to, it's all going to hell in a handbasket anyway. Might as well eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die—also by Dave Matthews, tripping bellies. Okay?

Now see, there are two kinds of people then that laugh in the face of a disaster or a coming storm or calamity or death. One is a fool, epicurious, the madman, crazy laugh. Right? Like, it's all gonna die anyway. Have a party. Pour me another one. But the other one, the other person who laughs in the face of disaster, coming storm is the sage. Why is the sage laughing? Because the sage knows where his refuge is, where her refuge is, and therefore can enjoy life even in the face of the coming storm. Because they know where the safe harbor is. They know where their home is.

Look, who are you? Are you the fool or are you the wise person? Are you the sage? You know, if you're here this morning and you're not a Christian, the best thing that you can do is either just laugh in the face of what's coming or give your life to the Lord of time. Otherwise, it's all meaningless. Might as well just laugh. Have a party because you're gonna die anyway. Or give your life to Jesus Christ, Lord of time, who will reorder your life, who will give you joy beyond measure, give you an eternity that you cannot even right now imagine. Come to him.

But let me ask you this: if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, are you acting like an idiot today? Are you acting the fool? I don't mean this as a rebuke, but one thing I've noticed in our church—we are not so good at joy. Worrying? Yeah. We're good at that. Productivity? Yes. Escape routes? Yes. Getting stuff done? Yes. Complaining? Good at that? Yes. Pacifiers? Yep. But joy? Not so much.

I don't mean this as a rebuke. I mean this is an invitation. Look, Christian, listen to me. You know the Lord. You know that you have eternity, that the worries of this day are an eyelash blink in light of what's to come. The things that are bothering you today will be forgotten. What is to come is so incredible. Why are you worried? Why are you afraid? Why are you filled with regret in your life?

Can you discern the Lord? Can you discern the time? Can you enjoy what he has for you? There is so much of this life to enjoy. Can I just remind you of a couple things? Good Berries peanut butter ice cream. Man, right? A day without humidity in Raleigh. Right, come on. One of those apples in the fall, the really crisp ones. Taking a puppy for a walk. A baby that falls asleep on you. That first day of spring. Sticking your feet in the ocean. Man, a homegrown tomato. That's about as good as it gets. These are just gifts. They are just gifts from the Lord. They're just for you to enjoy.

Joy, brothers and sisters, is not a reaction. It is a choice. It takes work to enjoy your life. It takes work to look around in the face of all that's hard coming on, all that's going down, all the sadness in this world, and to find those places where you say, "Yes, God is good. Not only is he giving me eternity, he's given me good berries. He's given me little things that are just tastes of his goodness."

Brothers and sisters, can we enjoy it? Can you pause from all the being driven, all the kronos of your life, just to enjoy this right now, right here, in little gifts?

Americans have the watch. Ethiopians have the time. But brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have eternity with your king forever whose joy will never end. Let that shape you.

Prayer

Father, we need so much more of an understanding and a humility about our days and our calendars and our busyness. We pray, Father, that you would meet us this day. Raise, Lord, our hopes. Raise our eyes, Lord. Help us to remember what is truer than true. We are living in eternity—not in some future date, but in the now. Father, we pray that we'd live that out.

In Jesus's name, Lord, we also pray for those who are here who don't know you. Father, I pray that they would be hungry and jealous of the good gifts that you have given your people, and that, Lord, that jealousy would drive them to you. Father, free us from frustration. Help us to live in your kairos moment.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen.