Of Time and a Season Part 4

[HKHaugan]

Of Time and a Season Part 4

 There is no more timely passage right now than the timing passage that names timed activities for our timing needs, Ecclesiastes 3. Let’s break it down, dissect it, or as the Brits say, ‘unpack it.’ For us in the season of a particular crisis, which lasts for a physical season, there is a spiritual season and the moments within that season the Lord has provided. Social distance give us a chance for personal spiritual evaluation. Whether you are single or married or with a larger family, this is an opportunity to grow in the Lord both personal an relationally.

 The overall context is vs.1, “There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the sun.” Remember the distinction between time and season. Time is a specific activity, a particular event, and seasons are the spiritual context in which the specifics happen. Therefore, vs.2-8 read spiritually give us a way to look at our personal and relational experiences.

 He has “made everything beautiful in its time (vs.11) means for me that every ‘thing’ that happens is an opportunity to experience the spiritual presence of God through it. In its ultimate meaning I am an event, an image of God. I live in a specific time. I am here to experience Him in every situation, moment, activity. I happen within the season of a relationship with Him. His will is a season for me. He has set eternity in my heart (vs.11), “For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal (2Cor.4:18).” Even as I write I know it is His Spirit moving my mind to offer my own contemplation as an encouragement for others to think and use the mind we have been given to experience intimacy with God.

 Let’s take these verses one at a time. Vs.2 says a time to be born and a time to die. Those are specific time events. Conception, when life begins and death, when we end physically. But could they mean more? For instance, our second birth, a spiritual birth, when we are spiritually restarted and a season of spiritual life in a relationship with God begins. From that rebirth are moments of choices and decisions, a call to make a choice and an activity decided upon based within a spiritual season way to response after the choice is made. Our physical time clock with all its seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years are full of choices. The spiritual atmosphere of seasons, the grace, love and truth of God, the fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:22) plus prayer, praise, thanksgiving, the belief, trust and faith that move our mind, heart and spirit; all those seasons are available from birth to death and resolved into an eternity with God.

 Every moment there is something being born, an opportunity to die to the world’s standard of thought and behavior and birth a new spiritual idea, action, change. The arrival of a crisis brings fear and a sinful way to react. In the season of God’s love, the moment of selfish thought dies and the new way of patient prayer emerges and then action. Whether you’re alone or married or in a strange place and time, the season of your grace-covered relationship with the Lord turns His Word over in your mind. The season of any part of the fruit of the Spirit is there for your personal moments.

 Another aspect is the evil spirits that can raise havoc with our fears. They operate through the attitudes that we developed in our past apart from God. They are the self-protective strategies we use to judge and avoid relational rejection and pain. When they arise in the mind and heart you have the power to send them into the ‘sea’, the depths, as Jesus did (Mark 5:1-20). Everything Jesus did has a spiritual personal meaning for us right where we are anytime, anywhere. The name of Jesus has power. He always made the right choice, decision and action. He is the only one who was right, the righteous One. The one He made for us, the Cross, is always our moment when we crucify the ‘old self.’

 I’m sure you can look at your own experience and see the world’s influence and determine the spiritual course of action necessary to meet your moments in the seasons you’re given. “A time to be born and a time to die.” Apply your spiritual relationship with the Lord to each new moment as a birth so that the “old man“ dies and the new moves closer to eternity.