Timing Is Everything

Do you have good timing or bad timing? Often when we reflect on triumph or tragedy, we easily can find ourselves saying well he or she was in the right place at the right time or on the flipside, wrong place, wrong time!

Timing is everything especially if you believe in divine providence.

Ecclesiastes 3 The title Ecclesiastes simply means the ‘preacher’ and we are presented with a very transparent sermon, the story of a long journey of faith found and almost lost yet one who is ready to entrust his thoughts to God.

We move from the pure wisdom of Solomon in Proverbs to a more edgier, crustier view on life coming from a older man who has seen it all. At one point you read his thoughts, ‘He has set eternity in the hearts of men’ and you say ‘right on’! Then you read, ‘Man’s fate is like that of the animals...man has no advantage over the animal’ and you are left scratching your head wondering if he has lost his.

In Ecclesiastes we have his honest reflections and it is schizophrenic at best. He does come around at the very end but not before taking us on a real journey of fate and faith. He contrasts the hopelessness of life under the sun with no thought of God as opposed to life with eternity in full view and recognizes the one thing that is true of all of us and that is we are all accountable to God. We will discover how to keep faith filled and fate free and how it has everything to do with timing!

I’m going to challenge you on some ‘time based’ questions...

Are you able to see the beauty in God’s timing? v1-8


We may have the best laid plans and then life happens doesn’t it?


You can have everything all set up to, the plan in motion and then something will happen that will change everything. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are different times in our lives, different seasons. It tells us there are times to love, celebrate, plant, heal, dance and mend. But there are also times to hate, die, mourn, weep, tear down and even (though it doesn’t say it in these words) dare I say, be sick.

Why are there times to be sick? What does sickness do to us? It forces us to slow down, to pause, to reorient our lives, to know healing! It is often is sickness and pain that we can hear God the best. C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘God whispers to us in our joy but shouts in our pain’

Do you have a good sense of timing?

A good sense of timing teaches us that we don’t set the timers.
God is in complete control.

A good sense of timing teaches me that it doesn’t all come at once. There are different seasons in my life. It exposes the false teaching of ’ prosperity gospel’. I’m not meant to have it all now and hopefully I will realize just how much I already have.

It is recognizing that the gospel is more about who I am receiving than what I’m getting out of this deal.

A good sense of timing is the juxtaposition of absolute opposites.
Can you see God in both places, can you accept God in both places, can you love God in both places? It is not easy to harmonize all the experiences mentioned here.

There are some experiences that many people wish they didn’t have to experience like going through weeping and mourning, the reality of war

There are times when we get stuck, we go so deep into the experience of death that we lose sight of birth, or we get so wrapped up in planting, being rooted that we forget that we are also meant to uproot.

There is something to be said about developing roots, but there is something really powerful about those who don’t stay too long in one place. They teach us not to get too attached to what we have because these possessions easily can possess us.


We can only see a fraction of the movement of time. Is this tyranny or a beautiful rhythm of life
The cycle of life... life is not static, it doesn’t stand still....Oh if we could only have
Ultimately these first 8 verses teach us that we are really not in control.

A time to refrain...when the father of the bride looks at you with you getting too affectionate
Did you ever think that you would be like this?

On our own we will always feel that there is something.
God appoints the times and the seasons. He knows when we are ready
He finishes his focus on times with a time to love and a time to hate.
What are we called to hate?
The consequences of sin....get a little righteous indignation in you!



Do you live with God’s perspective on your day to day time? v9-17

V9 presents us with a foundational question – what is the point of work anyways? He talks about the burden laid on us from the work that we perform.

The fact is as believers we are told to travel light. Burdens pile up on us when we only have the short view of our toil in mind...pay the bills, buy the groceries, keep filling up the tank with gas, keep getting stuck in traffic,

There is a place of redefinition, a place where we see recognize that ‘this too shall end’. It will enable us to fully embrace where we are now, where God is taking us and where we ultimately will be.

Redefinition allows us to find the meaning in every and all situations. When we do this, it will give us strength and meaning in the difficult places as well as the joy filled times.

There is a place where God seems distant, where problems seem overwhelming, where questions seem abundant, where faith is difficult.it is the dark night of the soul but God is there. It is a place where faith can prosper, where beauty comes from the ashes and where faith comes through the fire and turns to gold.

What are you looking for from God?

What are you hoping to discover about yourself?

Do you find satisfaction is what you are doing?

It is all a gift from God - the ability to enjoy what we do, the wisdom to gain perspective, to realize my life is completely in His hands, to know that this too shall end.

v10 We have been created with the knowledge of God Romans 1:19 People can repress the knowledge of God but it doesn’t deny that it is ultimately deep within us at our very core.

Speaking of things being made beautiful in their time...I have learned a few things in my travels and from believers in different cultures and countries.

In Nigeria Jerry has confirmed that relationships take precedence over time. If someone stops in and interrupts you, they will stop whatever they are doing and entertain the guest for the appropriate amount of time according to the relationship. If that makes you late for another engagement that is ok because it takes precedence. You can pretty much arrive whenever you get there and everybody is happy to see you; however, you never leave early from a public function because that is a sign of rudeness.

In Mexico, it is also not about the time that you arrive, but more importantly that you truly enter in when you are there and that you experience the fellowship... It not about the timing of the music, you just clap whenever you feel led. Services never started on time and no one is looking at their watches and wondering when the pastor is bringing the plane in for a landing.

Eternity is a long time to wrap your mind around, that is why God didn’t place it in our heads, he wants to settle it in our hearts!

We will all be held accountable.

Do you recognize when you lose your sense of balance? v18-22

When we lose our balance we lose our sense of timing.

I played on Wii fit for the first time this weekend and one of the first things you have to do is tell Wii a little bit about yourself, your age, your height. It then weighs you in and lets you know your body mass index. The last test you have to complete is a test of balance on one leg and it measures how close to the center you are holding. The better you do on this test, the better you come out on your Wii age, my Wii age is 33!

We lose our balance spiritually speaking when we lose sight of eternity. We become cynical, we get lost in the monotony of the routine. We become short sighted and we lose so much, we age spiritually but not in a good way. We age in the sense that we have nothing to offer in this life.

Fatalism is the creed of a will that is dying to its possibilities and seeks to drag the imagination with it. Resignation to life as a ‘so it is’ carved in stone is the cynical response of the one who does not know the grand triumph of the imagination that God has fashioned for us.
Ravi Zacharias in Recapture The Wonder

We lose hope, we become pessimistic and we are definitely not fun to be around.
Have you been around those kind of people?

How do we keep from becoming one of those kind of people?
We stand in awe!

It is deep within our heart that there is a longing to retain the wonder, to believe that there is someone or something will explain what our soul wants to confirm. We need heaven to invade our hearts

George Matheson was a man who wrote a glorious hymn while in the midst of a very bitter disappointing time in his life. He dearly loved a woman who he longed to marry. As their romance grew, he knew he had to tell her about his condition. She needed to know that he was growing blind and so before things went any further, he told her. To his complete surprise, she broke off the relationship and while he felt something inside him die during that time, he wrote this hymn.
O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller, be.
O joy that seeketh me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not in vain, that morn shall tearless be.
He said, ‘I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice, rather than working it out myself.’
Through his incredible loss, somehow he learned to live confidently in his conviction about the love of God and that He would never reject him.
Somehow the wonder of God’s love must be captured and be brought close to the heart.
However not only that, but we must learn the true cost of that love because wonder is also found there.
Only a commitment lived out truly explores wonder and is invaded by love.
Love is greater than any law and it is love for God and His ways that floods our souls and His timing is always perfect. We will never understand this to the full extent until we are perfected through eternity.
There is more to life than just enjoying your work
For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? v22
God is fully capable of giving us fresh glimpses of what we are leaving behind or the trail we are creating for our children.
Ephesians 5:15 make the most of every opportunity
Redeem the time you have, don’t keep reliving the way things used to be and don’t always be so forward looking, that you are always ‘hoping to live’. Treasure the relationships, experiences and places that God brings your way.

To see all of time in the light of eternity, to see every moment and every opportunity as a chance to glorify God, to receive life and experiences for what they are, and most of all, to be present. That is to be present to others in love, service and availability; to be present in what I am expected to do, with diligence, care, and integrity; to be present when needed, as my workplace, friends, or community need me.
Stuart McAllister