There
is an appointed time for everything – that is the first line of our reading
from Ecclesiastes today. I
remember the older translation, which says: For everything there is a
season. The
well-known verses from Ecclesiastes were even turned into a well-known popular
song in the 1960's, adapted by the rock musician Peter Seeger from the King
James text of this passage from the Bible. This
song became a popular peace anthem in the 1960s. I remember singing it as a child in the choir
at George Armstrong Elementary school in Chicago.
What
can we, as people of faith, make of these beautiful, poetic words that are so
familiar to us? God has appointed different times and seasons
in the way our world functions; these seasons are a part of the natural order
of things, a cycle that repeats itself again and again. Our
eternal God is beyond the temporality of the world, even though we live in a
world of change. In
fact, Father Vincent McNally, the church history professor I had in seminary,
used to commonly say that death and change were the only constants in our
world. And,
if we look at the changes we go through in our faith life, how our life of
faith is constantly evolving and changing as we continue on our journey, we can
appreciate how much change is so much a part of the world and our lives. And
with the tumultuous changes our national and global economy have endured in
recent years, change that is accompanied by a lot of worry and uncertainty, we
are all too familiar with the change that characterizes so much of our lives.
However,
even in the midst of all this change, God is a constant in our lives. As we
remember the poetic words of Ecclesiastes, of the different changes, seasons,
and challenges that are a part of our lives and of our worldly existence, may
we put our trust in God, who is all-knowing, omnipresent, and omniscient.
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