The seasons of life

Which is your favourite season?

Would you like it if it was permanently summer and never winter?   Are there good seasons and bad seasons? God has created the world so that the seasons need each other.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 is about seasons, not the cycle of weather seasons, but about the seasons of life.  It uses the words time/season interchangeably.

Notice that there are couplets/pairs – to be born-to die, plant-uproot, weep-laugh, mourn-dance, keep-throw away, be silent-speak, war-peace.  

They go together, they complement each other. It’s not a matter of choosing one and rejecting the other – there is a time for everything and every activity under heaven (verse 1)

So we can’t say there are good seasons and bad seasons, rather we see God’s timing in sending all the seasons in our lives.   God does everything at just the right time.

Of course some seasons are very challenging – I can look back over 40  years in Tanzania to some really difficult challenging times/seasons which I certainly didn’t want or enjoy or welcome – like my cancer diagnosis which coincided with the Covid pandemic resulting in me being suddenly plucked out of Tanzania and planted in Australia.  

You will all have experienced challenging seasons in your lives – unique to you.  

How do we live in these seasons?

This is the question addressed in these verses.

The answer comes in verses 11-13 .

Read these verses :

(11) God has made everything beautiful in its time (season).  He has also set eternity in the hearts of people; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from the beginning to end.

(12) I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live.

(13) That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in their toil – this is the gift of God.

• God has set eternity in the hearts of people (verse 11). Everyone struggles to make sense of life, to accept the difficult times, we question what God is doing – but deep down we know that there is a God who is far greater than us, we know we can’t do this on our own, we long for a relationship with God to help us. We are made for another world and those deep longings can actually only be truly satisfied when we come to Jesus.

• God has made everything beautiful in its time (season)  (verse 11)– life and death:

We are all born and given life — we know it’s not forever, that we cannot escape death. Can we see the beauty in death – eg palliative care and the last moments? Take the the loss of a spouse after a long season of marriage together.  That life together was something beautiful from God, a gift.

• There is nothing better for people than to be happy and do good while they live  (verse 12) - while we are still alive God wants us to enjoy life – joy is a better word than happy. Have joy in God to hold us up in the sad times, in the suffering and grief of mourning a loved one.  

One way to bring joy back into our lives at times like this is to do good – look outward to help and support others.   Consider the spouse who is left alone.  My sister’s words to my grieving mother who was giving up on life after the death of my father – “Remember you have children and grandchildren to enjoy —they need you”.    

Ephesians 2:10 We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

• Some of this advice sounds like secular strategies in accepting and persevering, but actually they are all rooted in God and only truly possible when we are walking with Jesus and his Spirit.  

That everyone may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in their toil – this is a gift of God.  (verse 13)

When God first created mankind  - man and woman, male and female -  he gave them work to do – in the garden of Eden, to tend it. After sin entered they were expelled resulting in it being hard work to live, bear children, toil in the fields. Jesus came to transform that toil to working in him – doing everything as before a heavenly master, doing our work well to please him.    

This leads into verse 14 – We’ve been looking at how we live in the seasons of life and their purpose.  

I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it.  God does it so that people will revere him (verse 14)

▪ Remember in verse 11 God has set eternity in our hearts. To find meaning and purpose and to be able to embrace each season of life, we need to look at it in the perspective of eternity – the eternal fruit which will endure forever.  Look beyond this life to be ready for that inevitable season of death. It is all under God’s sovereign control so walk in it rather than fighting against it, accepting it reluctantly.

▪ God’s ultimate purpose for us in every season of life, in every circumstance, is so that people will revere him (verse 14).  It’s not just for us to personally enjoy God, though that is important, it is also so that,as a result of how we live in our seasons, the blessed ones and the challenging ones, will have an outward purpose – for others to see Jesus in us, to see what a difference Jesus makes, to search for Jesus themselves and to revere him as we do.

▪ To Revere – to respond to him, to hope, trust, give him glory, enjoy, - in all kinds of seasons

Conclusion

Embrace the rhythms of the seasons in your life as they evolve from one to the other, remember that God is sovereign and sees and is with us, we can’t choose, he knows better, the big picture.  God is doing something beautiful with eternal consequences.

Make good use of your current time/season.

Times of change are opportunities for God to show us that is all in his hands and control.  We didn’t choose the change, but we are God’s children and that is enough.

1 John 3:1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should called children of God! And that is what we are.

The hard seasons lead us to the wonder of the new things to come – ultimately revealed in Rev 21.

John 15 – Remain/abide in Jesus, as he remains/abides in you.

Each one – ask ourselves – Where am I now?  How is this season for me?

Prayer –

In this season Lord, I need you, I cant always understand why things happen, but I trust you, show me even just glimpses of what you are doing, of the beauty you are showing me, you have gone before and so you have given me hope.  I trust you my God and Saviour, I worship and love and revere you and want to always bring you glory and glorify  your name forever.

Sermon notes kindly shared by Rev Canon Helen Hoskins who has spent over 40 years living and serving in Tanzania.

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