“For everything there is a season” (Ecclesiastes 3:10)—I am sure you know the verse well. We are all familiar with it, and yet it is so often misused.
People will often quote the verse in response to a bad thing that has happened or a hard time that you are going through. But if you look back at the verses in Ecclesiastes 3, a world is depicted that involves not only the bad but the good, “a time to mourn” AND “a time to dance” (Eccl. 3:4).
The passage goes on to say (and I love this!), that God has made “everything beautiful in its time” and that “He has set eternity in our hearts” (Eccl. 3:11).
There is so much more going on here than the mere passage of time with all its joys and sorrows. Here, in Ecclesiastes, we find a call to something more, a call to rise above the everyday passage of time and to embrace God’s time.
For Christians, time is much more than just what the Greeks called Chronos – the passing of time as a measurable quantity of days, weeks, and years. Through Liturgical Living; the reading of Scripture, prayer, the celebration of the Eucharist, and the observance of the feast days and fast days, the Chronos is sanctified and becomes Kairos.
Kairos is time that is not measured by its duration, but instead by its quality and significance. Liturgical Living reminds us daily that we have been chosen by God to be his people and that it is our relationship with him, and nothing else, that gives our lives significance.
When I realized the Church had already created a way for me to enter into God’s time (what the writer of Ecclesiastes was talking about), I got excited. By reordering my family’s life to follow the Liturgical Year and all of its rhythms, everything became full of intention and meaning.
Now, when I make a meal for the people in my life, it is no ordinary meal! It is a foretaste of the banquet table that God has prepared for us in heaven.
Now, when I decorate my home for the season, it’s not in response to the latest fad, it’s a celebration of the life of Christ.
Now, the everyday moments of my life aren’t just everyday moments anymore! They are shaped by the seasons of the Church. And so they are holy. And God is making everything beautiful in its time.