This is my article for the May newsletter for Second Baptist. I thought that I would share it here too.
Chapter 3 of Ecclesiastes presents the author’s idea of time. It begins with the iconic line, “There is a time for everything, /and a season for every activity under the heavens.” It continues with a series of opposites, birth and death, planting and reaping, tearing down and building up, mourning and dancing, with the author proclaiming that each of these is right and good in its own time.
I’ll admit that I first heard this not from the scripture but from the 1950s Pete Seager song “Turn, Turn, Turn” that was later popularized by The Byrds. When I was a kid my dad had a tape labeled “Folk/Protest” that contained this song along with songs by the Kingston Trio, Joan Baez, The Bryds, and many others. My dad had made this tape by painstakingly recording from LPs to the cassette tape. No just downloading the songs from iTunes back in the 80s!
That tape was the soundtrack to my childhood. It was played in the car on every road trip, often more than once. I can still tell you all about Tom Dooley, the hard rain that was falling, and about a tiny country in Europe called Andorra that had, according to Seager, a minuscule defense budget.
I’ve been thinking about that tape, and the others that were in my dad’s little case, a lot recently. I’m not sure that my kids, when they come, are going to have the same experience that I did listening to the same things over and over again. After all, I carry in my pocket a device on which I can get just about any song ever recorded. We live in a time of mind-boggling access to information and entertainment, all streaming straight to our pockets. Many of the fondest memories of my childhood, like singing along to Pete Seager about there being a time to be born and a time to die, were the result not of abundance but scarcity.
The author of Ecclesiastes is right, there is a time for everything, even abundance and scarcity. But the important thing is that all of these things are “under heaven,” under the authority and design of a good and gracious God. There was a time for me to be in school, learning and growing in my identity as a pastor and servant-leader. Now it is a time for me to move into something new and different.
What time is it in your life? What is it that God is calling you to do and be, right now? And more importantly, is this the time to be doing what you are doing now, no matter how good it is? We can do good and right things but do them in a sinful and disordered way if we are using our timeline for them and not God’s.
I’m not sure yet what God has in store for Audrey and me next, what he is calling us to, but I have faith that the Good Shepherd is not going to lead us astray.
But I do know one thing. When we have kids, I’m going to make them listen to the same three playlists over and over again. It only seems fair. And it’ll probably be good for them.
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