WEBVTT 00:00:00.959 --> 00:00:03.520 There's an appointed time for everything. 00:00:03.839 --> 00:00:06.559 Most of us have heard those words before. 00:00:06.799 --> 00:00:14.320 A time to be born, a time to die, a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn, a time to dance. 00:00:14.560 --> 00:00:16.480 These are beautiful words. 00:00:16.960 --> 00:00:20.320 But I'm not sure they're comforting words. 00:00:20.559 --> 00:00:25.600 Because Ecclesiastes is telling us something we spend much of our lives trying to avoid. 00:00:25.839 --> 00:00:27.519 Everything changes. 00:00:27.839 --> 00:00:30.160 There are seasons of our life. 00:00:30.399 --> 00:00:37.119 And one of the reasons we suffer is that we keep trying to hold on to a season that God is asking us to release. 00:00:37.359 --> 00:00:39.520 We want the good times to remain. 00:00:39.759 --> 00:00:41.840 We want the people we love to remain. 00:00:42.000 --> 00:00:46.159 We want our health to remain, we want our children to remain children. 00:00:46.399 --> 00:00:49.759 We want relationships to remain exactly as they were. 00:00:50.079 --> 00:00:59.359 We want the parish, the family, the career, the friendship, the body, the world around us to remain familiar and comfortable, but it doesn't. 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:02.079 And Scripture does not pretend otherwise. 00:01:02.399 --> 00:01:05.040 There is an appointed time for everything. 00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:09.680 Notice that Ecclesiastes does not say every season will be pleasant. 00:01:09.920 --> 00:01:13.359 It says there will be time to laugh and there's going to be a time to weep. 00:01:13.519 --> 00:01:16.879 There's a time to build and there's also a time to tear down. 00:01:17.120 --> 00:01:20.560 There's a time to embrace, but there's also a time to let go. 00:01:21.200 --> 00:01:23.280 This is where faith becomes real. 00:01:23.760 --> 00:01:28.959 Because sometimes we think faith means that God will keep difficult seasons from happening. 00:01:29.200 --> 00:01:32.079 But biblical faith is much deeper than that. 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:36.640 Faith means discovering that God is still God in every season. 00:01:36.959 --> 00:01:41.599 God is God when the prayer is answered, and God is God when we're still waiting. 00:01:41.920 --> 00:01:47.920 God is God when the diagnosis is good, and God is God when the news changes everything. 00:01:48.239 --> 00:01:54.239 God is God when the relationship begins, and God is God when someone we love dies. 00:01:55.120 --> 00:02:02.079 God is God when we understand what he's doing, and God is still God when absolutely nothing makes sense. 00:02:02.319 --> 00:02:05.439 That's why the final line in today's reading is so important. 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:14.080 Ecclesiastes says that God has made everything appropriate to its time and has put the timeless into their hearts. 00:02:14.400 --> 00:02:15.599 The timeless. 00:02:16.240 --> 00:02:19.199 It's an extraordinary description of the human heart. 00:02:19.520 --> 00:02:24.639 We live in time, but something inside of us longs for eternity. 00:02:25.120 --> 00:02:28.080 That is why change hurts so much. 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:36.000 We want things to last, we want love to last, we want happiness to last, we want life itself to last. 00:02:36.960 --> 00:02:40.719 And nothing in this world quite satisfies that desire. 00:02:41.199 --> 00:02:43.919 Every beautiful moment eventually ends. 00:02:44.159 --> 00:02:46.479 Every photograph becomes a memory. 00:02:46.639 --> 00:02:49.520 Every achievement eventually belongs to yesterday. 00:02:49.759 --> 00:02:54.960 Every person we love will someday have to be entrusted to the mercy of God. 00:02:55.439 --> 00:03:02.560 And perhaps that ache we feel is not a defect in us, perhaps it is pointing us somewhere. 00:03:02.879 --> 00:03:05.599 Saint Augustine understood this profoundly. 00:03:05.840 --> 00:03:12.960 He wrote, You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until it rests in you, those famous words. 00:03:13.199 --> 00:03:14.719 But that's the secret. 00:03:15.039 --> 00:03:18.960 We keep asking temporary things to satisfy an eternal hunger. 00:03:19.120 --> 00:03:20.319 Well, they cannot. 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:28.080 Nor career can do it, no relationship can do it, no spouse, no amount of money can do it, no success can do it. 00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:33.120 Not even the people we love most can carry the weight of being our eternity. 00:03:33.439 --> 00:03:35.120 Only God can do that. 00:03:35.360 --> 00:03:38.560 And that changes how we live through difficult seasons. 00:03:38.800 --> 00:03:42.560 Maybe you're in a season right now that you would never have chosen. 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:49.599 A time of waiting, a time of grief, maybe a time of a certainty, of rebuilding, of letting go. 00:03:49.840 --> 00:03:53.919 And perhaps your prayer has been, God, get me out of this. 00:03:54.479 --> 00:03:56.560 Maybe today's prayer needs to be different. 00:03:56.800 --> 00:03:59.599 God, show me how to find you in all of this. 00:04:00.319 --> 00:04:06.240 Because sometimes we become so desperate for the next chapter that we miss what God is doing in this chapter. 00:04:07.280 --> 00:04:13.120 There are things God teaches us in the waiting that we could never learn by getting everything immediately. 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:17.439 There are things we discover in weakness that success could never teach us. 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:22.639 There are people we become through suffering that comfort alone could never produce. 00:04:22.959 --> 00:04:33.040 And there are things we need to release because our hands cannot receive what comes next while they are still desperately gripping what and what has already passed. 00:04:33.360 --> 00:04:36.319 So maybe today we need to ask one simple question. 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:38.879 What time is it in my life? 00:04:39.199 --> 00:04:48.000 Is it a time to build, a time to heal, a time to speak, a time to be silent, a time to begin again, a time to grieve or forgive? 00:04:48.319 --> 00:04:50.480 Is it time to finally let go? 00:04:51.839 --> 00:04:55.199 Let go of that one thing that's holding me back. 00:04:56.240 --> 00:05:00.560 Whatever season you're in, do not confuse a season with your whole story. 00:05:00.879 --> 00:05:02.800 This moment is not eternity. 00:05:03.040 --> 00:05:04.720 This suffering is not eternity. 00:05:04.879 --> 00:05:06.240 This too shall pass. 00:05:06.879 --> 00:05:11.040 This disappointment is not eternity, even this life is not eternity. 00:05:11.360 --> 00:05:19.040 God has placed the timeless in your heart because ultimately your heart was made for something this world cannot give you. 00:05:19.279 --> 00:05:20.480 It was made for him. 00:05:21.199 --> 00:05:24.079 So do not be afraid when the season changes. 00:05:24.399 --> 00:05:28.480 The season changes all the time, but God does not. 00:05:28.959 --> 00:05:37.360 And sometimes faith is simply having enough trust to release what was, receive what is, and place what comes next into the hands of God. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:38.480 Amen.