Chasing the Vapor | Ep. 3

Well guys we are in episode three of our study through Ecclesiastes and the first couple of weeks we have talked through really the theme of this book and kind of the origin of what the author is really trying to tell us and the reason why this book was even written in the first place and then last week we really started diving in and talking about our unceasing hunger that we see in this book and just our appetite for more and more and more and especially how we see that in our culture today and so we're never truly satisfied with those things that we chase after and kind of the other part of this is that we're gonna talk about today is that there's never enough time for the things that we chase after unfortunately and this is kind of another big theme in this book and I personally love time travel and movies about space and so one of the most impactful scenes I've really ever seen about the concept of time was in the movie Interstellar and so in this scene a couple of the team members have traveled down to a planet to see if it's going to be habitable for them but they know that an hour on this planet will actually equal seven years of life on earth based on time dalation things that I don't really quite understand but at the movie I'm like okay I'm trusting you here and so they things go really wrong on this mission and when they finally arrived back on the spaceship they've only experienced really a couple of hours of their life on the planet but their partner who was left on the ship I will never forget this moment because it took my breath away he said you've been gone 23 years and 23 years were gone in an instant and I was so impacted by that because I think literally what a waste of time like 23 years wasted but that's such the crazy that's the crazy thing about time is that we're always trying to get more of it but it's constantly slipping through our fingers and we're trying to manage it and we feel like it's a commodity and a resource we can try to get more of or make the most of our time and man it just doesn't feel like our lives are removing fast enough or even moving too fast for us to enjoy them I think we live on both sides of that spectrum. And so there's a really famous passage in Ecclesiastes. It's a poem that opens up chapter 3 and I wanted to read through it. It says, "There's a time for everything

and a season for every activity under the heavens. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to uproot. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to mourn and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. A time to search and a time to give up. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be silent and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace." So you guys think through what's happening here. What do you think Solomon is trying to tell us about time or how have you even experienced this commodity of time in your life? Time is relentless. So this past summer, my wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary and you kind of sit there and it's like, "Oh, this is really great." And then you say, "How in the world has that amount of time passed?" How has it been a quarter of a century? It's just one of those things where you feel like I don't know where the time has gone. I don't know where this was all spent at. But I think what Solomon is pointing us to, I mean, this poem is absolutely beautiful on so many levels. I mean, it's so great. I mean, the birds turned it into a hit song in the 60s and everybody loves it. But the poem is just tracing through so much about life, right? Like, these are the seasons that we go through. These are the times of our lives. And they do it through -- Solomon does it through a series of what is called "marisms," where you take kind of the opposite end of things to talk about the whole experience of life. Like a way we would use that in English would be, "I cleaned the house from top to bottom," right? You're saying, you know, the two extremes equal the whole. And so he's just saying, "This is the whole experience of our life. There are times where we plant and times where we harvest and times where there's war and times where there's peace." And I think it's just a beautiful way for us to think about how our life flows, you know, is that it's so much in seasons of life and so much in times of life. Like, "Oh, this is a time where I'm doing this. This is a time where I'm experiencing this. And life is just perpetually moving through those seasons as we travel through time." And I'm reminded too that, gosh, like that phrase, You know, the days are long, but the years are short. the more I feel that of like, gosh,

like there are just, there are some days where it's just, you know, you're just, you're fighting through it, you're navigating through different things. And then you look up and it's like, oh my gosh. Like it's been a year, it's been two years, three years, four years after I've dealt with that. But then again, at the same time, it's a reminder that, you know, we tend to look at time as this like linear thing, which it obviously is, right? It's always moving. And, but God has appointed seasons for our life. - Yeah. - You know, he has appointed different seasons. And I am so guilty of whatever season I'm in, I have one foot in the next. - Yes. - You know, or I'm thinking about something in the past. And I forget that God wants us to focus on the here and the now. - Yeah, it's really interesting that you both bring up seasons because I think so many times we think of our life as linear, right? Like this happens and then this happens and then this and this. But the Lord created the earth in a cycle in these seasons of life. And so how does understanding our lives from that perspective help us understand time better? Because if we kind of get away from the linear timeline

and we think, oh, it is a season of life. And we say that, it's a very Christianese word. We say it a lot, but I think it's really true to relate our lives to those seasons. Cause it's how the Lord designed it in the first place. And how does that keep our expectations and our hope and life in check? - Well, you know, yeah, I think God designed the world to run on sunrises and seasons. And we run it by clocks and calendars, right? And that is what gets us in trouble. Is that we're always looking forward and we're always thinking ahead. And we're not embracing like, hey, this is what's going on right here and right now. You know, it's interesting in the course of getting ready for the study. I discovered like the timeline is actually a fairly recent invention. It wasn't an invented until 1765 by a man named Joseph Priestley, the first kind of visualization of time flowing in that way. And previous, like we had thought of time as that cycle. Like it's always just moving back spring, summer, winter fall, spring, summer, winter fall, sunrise, sunset, all of these things. And we sort of started to visualize it like, no, it's heading somewhere. It's going somewhere, which is true. And I'm sure we'll probably talk about a lot of the time. We don't need time is going somewhere. But it's amazing how much of our concept

of what we go through is informed by the timeline. Because the timeline kind of subconsciously makes us think, my life is advancing. And this time next year, I need to be in a better place than I am this time, this time this year. And what seasons remind us of is like, no, like everything kind of has a pattern. Everything kind of works according to even these season Solomon talks about, like, hey, you're going to go through a time to harvest and a time to plan and a time to do this and a time to do that. You're going to go through all these seasons. And they're going to cycle back on you. And you just need to be ready and prepared for them while even though you're enjoying the season you're currently in life, these seasons aren't always going to last. And you need to take them as they come and for what they are. Yeah, and I think there's an encouraging word for us in chapter three of Ecclesiastes. You go a little bit further down from that poem. And he says in verse 11, you know, he has made, so God has made everything appropriate in its time, right? And what's sobering is that we have a time. Yeah. Like we have a time and that's sobering to think about because we live in this delusion almost that like we will be here forever, you know? And on one hand, for those of us that know Christ, like death is not the end, right? That we'll be living an eternity with him

that for us here on earth, like there is a clock to that. And, you know, we can either go to one direction where it's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna look at that clock and be stressed out about when's that thing gonna run out? Or am I going to trust that God has appointed the right time, the right season for all things in my life? And ultimately I can trust him with it. Yeah, that's really good. I think the hard part of this though, like on the flip side, like Ecclesiastes does remind us that we are running out of time, right? And it's the commodity and a resource that we just can't get enough of. And again, we try to manage it and try to make the most of our time. But the end is coming. Like death is coming for us all. And it reminds me of Psalm 90 verse 12. It says, "Teach us to number our days that we maintain a heart of wisdom." And so all of our days are numbered. And it's very sobering, you know, it's something we don't wanna think about. But how does numbering our days really help us not only manage our time in a wise way, in light of eternity, but also in light of our time here on earth. But also think about time in the right context. Like no matter what season we're in, how can I align my heart with what the Lord is?

- You know, I think so much of it comes down to thinking through our toxic ways of numbering our days and thinking about them. Because so often the traps I find myself in, and maybe this happens if you get older. I don't know. But I find myself either, especially now, I should say trap by nostalgia. Like, oh, I wish things were like that. Or I wish it was, even my oldest daughter turns 15 this year, and there's even a part of me already that's like, man, I wish they were still seven. You know, I wish they were still that age. At the same token, I think when you're younger, your temptation with time is to be more of what I guess what I would call a futurist. Like, there's not a word for nostalgia for the future. Like, we need that. We don't have that. But we're either looking ahead to something thinking like, oh, I'm gonna get that, and everything's gonna be great. Or we're looking back and we're thinking, man, I wish it was like that. I wish I'd be back there. And so it creates like this timesickness in us, where we're just like, we're not in the moment, like you're saying, we're not living in the season that God has for us. And I think, you know, how we deal with that is, you know, there's kind of good news and bad news, right?

If you look at life as a season, if you're going through one of the bad seasons, Solomon talks about here, you can look at it and say, okay, this is just a time. Like, this is gonna pass. - That's fair. - This is gonna move past me. But if you're going through a good season, I think it also makes you more grateful. Like, to look back and say, okay, this is not always the way it's gonna be. Like, I mean, thinking about my kids again, if I could go back to that. Like, I wouldn't be as upset as like a spilled milk or something like that. Because it's like, oh, like, ultimately this is, why am I upset about this? I should just enjoy this time while I have this time. And I think that's what Solomon's trying to get at here with us is like, hey, this time that you have right now, it's all the time you have. It is the only moment you can live in. So live in it. - Yeah, that's really good. It reminds me of this concept. If you guys know the concept of plot armor with movies or books, have y'all heard of this? Okay, Brandon's lying, I said, oh, so plot armor. Think of like Jack Bauer in 24. That guy should've died so many times,

but the author still had a story for him to write. And so that's the same thing for us. And when we think about our lives with the Lord, he has our story. And there's so many times that maybe we should've left this earth and we don't even know it, but he has numbered our days. And I think that helps us live confidently, each and every day of like, I have meaning, I have a purpose, but also when the word calls me home, I know that's my time because he's the author of the story. And so Derek, I'll kind of let you have this final word, you know, in verse six, or verse six, in chapter six, 10 through 12, it says, whatever exists has already been named and what humanity is has been known. No one can contend with someone who is stronger the more the words, less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone? And so what he's saying is, what exists has already been named? Like whatever's the Lord has planned is gonna happen. And so with that in mind, like, how can we live in confidence knowing that we have a God who guides our time? - Yeah, I think it comes down to trusting that he's good, like trusting in his plans for us. And I think ultimately that's one of the biggest themes that I would encourage us to wrestle with throughout our life and every season

of asking that question of like, okay, like this season is terrible. Like do I trust that God is good, that he has a plan that he will bring me through this? This season is great. Like do I trust that even in this, like it is good for me, it is bringing good things. And so, you know, someone once said, yeah, you're either in a season where like you're in a valley, coming out of a valley or about to go into a valley. And ultimately, like if you trust your guide, you're gonna be okay. You know, if you trust your guide, you're gonna be okay. And that would be the same thing that I would encourage all of us is that knowing that we all have an appointed time, that not every season will be great, but we have a God who is great, right? And can be trusted. And ultimately, that's where we can put our hope. (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music) (gentle music)