“Stuck?”
By Rev. Michael Stonhouse
Meditation – Wednesday, June 5, 2024
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-15 (Forward, p. 38) CEV p. 680
I don’t know how many times this passage has been chosen to be read at a funeral by the family of a loved one, but I have never spoken to it at the funeral, nor have I queried the family as to what they have taken from it. For me, it suggests a kind of fatalism, a kind of predestination, that I have trouble with. With an older person, a person who has lived a rich. full and meaningful life, to speak of it now ‘being time’, isn’t at all troubling. But to use that same sentiment for a twenty-something that has just committed suicide, or a child cruelly struck down by cancer or by a drunk driver seems not only cruel and heartless, but also profoundly disturbing to even suggest that God had intentionally planned it—that is, it was now ‘the season’ to die.
And yet, there are certainly those Christians that see reality in those terms, to paint God as being supremely sovereign and actively in control in planning and orchestrating all things that happen on earth. To me, this dispenses with human free will and choice, that is, the concept that many things that happen on earth take place simply because of the choices, for bad or for good, that we humans make. Now, of course, there is a conundrum here, a kind of paradox, for how do we put together God’s sovereignty and human free will?
In response, I have come up with a kind of three-pronged answer: firstly, that God chooses to limit Himself and become subject to our choices; secondly, that even though God knows of our choices and their outcomes far in advance, we are still freely able to make those decisions; and thirdly, that God makes use of those decisions, those choices, and works them into His good, gracious and loving plan. And so I can put together the sense that God truly does love us and work things out for our benefit (see Romans 8:28), but also that we have some responsibility here on earth to make wise and helpful choices, in a kind of divine-human partnership, you might say. Thanks be to God.
Forward notes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (verse 1).
“My wife, our two preteens, and another family were on a Colorado river rafting trip. Our guide suddenly fell out of the raft screaming at me, ‘Don’t
steer!’ By that time, the boat was climbing five-foot walls of water and being slammed from every direction. My reaction? Steer the boat, which proved futile. The river was in control.
“Unaware of the situation, my boatmates were exhilarated while I was panicked. I felt the river’s overwhelming power and my own powerlessness. When the river calmed, our guide caught up. My raftmates’ eyes turned to me as if I had guided them to safety. I shrugged, ‘Just went with the flow.’
“Our lives constantly change, often unexpectedly and in opposites: tears and laughter, anxiety and serenity, suffering and healing, death and resurrection. As the Ecclesiastes writer observes, for each change, there is a purpose under heaven. The one enduring element is the everlasting flow of God’s love, God’s sovereignty.”
MOVING FORWARD: “Amid change, are you aware of God’s everlasting love in your life?”