He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
Ecclesiastes 3:11
In verses 2–8 of Ecclesiastes 3 displays a remarkable listing of 28 “times,” arranged in 14 pairs of opposites (e.g., “a time to be born, and a time to die,” v. 2, “a time to kill, and a time to heal” v.3). The entire section is introduced by a definitive statement from God: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (v. 1).
It is then climaxed by His remarkable assurance in the words of our verse for the day. Everything that God has made is beautiful in its appropriate time—even death and war, killing and hating, and all the other seemingly negative circumstances in the list, as well as 14 positive circumstance—healing and loving, building and planting, and many others.
The pronoun (implied) could be either “its” or “His,” and since all our “times” are “in His hand” (Ps 31:15), it is fitting to recognise that the appropriate time for “every purpose under heaven” is through His time—God’s time.
Thus, everything that God has made is, in fact, beautiful when accomplished in His own time, in His way, as set forth in His Word. We may not understand many things in our time, for “no man can find out the work that God made from the beginning to the end.”
Nevertheless, when God made us, He “set eternity in [our hearts],” so that the deepest roots of our nature assure us that God exists and He cares. God who created our hearts, has given to us instinctive need to seek a higher being, a spiritual power that would quench our inner most desires. Therefore, in Christ we are able to fulfil this vacuum and experience inner peace and joy for God has set eternity in our hearts.
The Hebrew word for “world” means, literally, “world without end”. Thus, all that happens to us, if accepted and applied according to God’s Word, becomes beautiful, and “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28).
May the Lord lead and guide our hearts that we will not stray from His will and purpose for our lives. Let us seek the Lord diligently for He is a rewarder to those who wait patiently for Him .
