Changing Seasons
by Dr. Jon Walton
In a recent sermon, I spoke about the Wisdom literature and used a text from Proverbs as the basis for that sermon. The Wisdom literature in the Bible includes not only Proverbs, but also Ecclesiastes, the book that follows. It’s in Ecclesiastes that the songwriter Pete Seeger found the inspiration to write the words to a hit recorded by The Byrds, a rock group of the 1960’s. The words are easy to remember: “To everything, turn, turn, turn; there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time for every purpose under heaven.” It’s really Ecclesiastes 3:1, minus the “turns” that we’re hearing. The song, like the Biblical passage simply marks the fact that time marches on, things change, there is war and there is peace; a time to mourn and a time to dance. It may not be the most profound insight into life, but it is an accurate and undeniable one. The pop version of this truth would be “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”
This fall, as school begins and we start another season of church activities, I keep hearing people say that the summer went too quickly and no one seems ready for the fall. “How was your summer?” I’ve asked a lot of people, and many have said, “Not as good as I had hoped.” There is a weariness in the air this fall that is different from the other autumn seasons that I remember. People are not volunteering as readily to help with church activities, such as teaching church school or helping supervise the homeless shelter. Everyone seems weary… and we’ve only just begun. Maybe it’s the economy, the grinding sameness of work that seems less rewarding because it’s less lucrative, and many of the people we know are out of work. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s palpable; a sameness to this season that seems to make us tired before we’ve started.
The writer of Ecclesiastes had a name for this feeling. He called it vanity; the futility of making more of the events of life than they warranted. Perhaps too many people he saw were making too much of the successes and the failures of their lives. So he called for a realization that there is not much new under the sun, and all of our accomplishments are not as great when compared to God’s accomplishments. Things change, and today’s success will turn into tomorrow’s disappointment, but don’t let it get you down, the writer of Ecclesiastes warns; it’s vain to make too much of any success or any failure, because in time whatever seems so monumental will change.
Recently I heard about a teacher new to the city who began her class on Friday, September 11th, by inviting the students in the class to observe a moment of silence. On the face of it, it would seem a very thoughtful and respectful thing to do. The problem was, most of the children in the class were eight or under, and while they may have heard of 9/11, they didn’t really have any appreciation of the meaning, impact, and life-altering power of what had happened that day when they were still infants. It seems impossible to imagine anyone who doesn’t understand the power of 9/11 in our lives, but if you were just born that year, how could you know? Everything changes, everything stays the same. If this autumn seems to be off to a slow start, read Ecclesiastes 3 again and ponder how time and eternity are God’s, not ours, to behold.
Jon M. Walton
