We live for our appointed time and then we go. In one sense we are, as Solomon reflects here, like everything else in God’s creation that comes and goes at its appointed time. We are part of an eternal continuum that we cannot fathom: “[God] has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end” (3:11). We can’t see the big picture, but there is one. There is a great plan being worked out and your arrival in this world was perfectly timed and foreordained. “All the days ordained for me were written in your book,” says the writer of Psalm 139. You came into this world at just the right time. You may bemoan some of the circumstances you were born into, and that is fitting. We are not meant to like the world as it is. We are here on mission, to be agents of change. You are a link in a generational chain, so you must ensure that what the next generation gets from you is better than what you got from the last generation (as good as that may have been). God’s timing is perfect. When you walk with God you will always be in the right place at the right time. Often it doesn’t seem so to us but that is because we tend to apply different criteria to our situations than God. A circumstance is right for you, in God’s economy, not because it is pleasurable, but because it presents an opportunity to make a difference. Today is as it must be and so will tomorrow be.
Ask God to show you what he wants you to do in your present situation.
Read Ecclesiastes 3:1-14
