God’s Time

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

Because everything has a season, nothing (at least on earth) lasts forever. God has appointed a “season” for everything. Seasons have beginnings and endings. They last, but not too long. Solomon’s thesis is this: Every activity of mankind has a proper time and a predetermined duration. Our lives will be a lot less stressful if we recognize that the omniscient hand of God has appointed a time when things are to be done, and He has a predetermined duration for those things to last.

Everyone goes through good times and bad times; together they make up the seasons of your life. Make sure you don’t live only for the good times; when the bad times come, and they will, you won’t have the strength to handle them. And make sure you don’t let the bad times defeat you. If you do, you’ll miss out on all the good times God still has in store for you. It takes both to make a life.

Why does Solomon say all these things about time? The answer is found in verse 11: “He [God] hath made every thing beautiful in His time.” At the appropriate point in time, God will make everything fit into the season of your life. It’s like the pieces of a puzzle. You struggle to piece things together, and then all of a sudden things just seem to fall into place. That’s what happens when you commit all of your ways to God.

God will never be late and He’ll never be early. Furthermore, He knows the proper duration for that event. He never allows it to last too long nor cuts it off too short. When you live and die in the knowledge of God’s eternal plan, you live and die with this confidence—God makes all things beautiful in their time.

Are you tired of everything in your life going wrong? Are you fed up with trying to make things in your life lovely and easy and pleasant, only to have them turn out messy and hard and distasteful? Maybe you’ve gone the whole route. You’ve been through alcohol, you’ve been through drugs, you’ve been through sex addiction, you’ve been through climbing the ladder of success—and your life is still a colossal mess. But don’t give up yet. There is an answer. The answer is Jesus Christ in your life. It’s through faith in Jesus Christ as your Savior that God can make your life beautiful, and He does it in His own time. Maybe this is God’s time for you.

—Woodrow Kroll, condensed