Living Life As It Comes to You - Part II
For everything there is a season, and
a time for every matter under heaven
Ecclesiastes 3:5b-8
A Sermon By The Reverend O. Thomas Miles
Silver Spring, Maryland 20910-4123 - Copyright 2007
* * * * *
In part 1 of this sermon,
preached in November 2006,
we considered
the first seven of fourteen
observations on life
made by the author of Ecclesiastes.
In this second part of the sermon
we consider the second
seven observations
made by Ecclesiastes.
The author of Ecclesiastes,
a man called a preacher,
describes life
as it came to him and
how he lived it--
and his apparent belief
that life comes to all of us
with the need
to live it as it comes to us.
You might disagree with
his list of opposites.
You might delete some items and
you might add some, but
it is difficult
if not impossible
to argue with his basic idea:
that life comes to us
in the extremes of
its opposites.
In spite of being a preacher,
Ecclesiastes' author,
we discovered,
is, by golly, a realist.
(A trait frequently missing
from some clergy!)
He not only faces life head-on;
he also recognizes
how emotions
express our reactions
to life as it comes to us.
To put it mildly,
he is gutsy
about the human experience.
In his eighth observation about life
he recognizes our humanity
whenever life vacillates
between the
extremes of human experience.
The preacher says
there is "a time to embrace.".
No doubt everyone can recall
her or his time to embrace:
perhaps when, as a child, you ran, crying,
into the arms of mother or father;
when, after a long separation,
the mere site of a loved one
demanded nothing less
than an embrace-
possibly with tears;
when some time of anxiety ended
because things
turned out all right and
relief came to mind
as well as body
through an embrace.
In describing one of his friends,
poet William Winter (1836-1917) wrote:
His love was like the liberal air,--
Embracing all, to cheer and bless,
And every grief that mortals share
Found pity in his tenderness.(1)
But the author of Ecclesiastes
surprises us.
He says there is also
a time
to refrain from embracing.
How seemingly strange yet realistic.
Sometimes the human psyche,
including the body,
wants and needs nothing
but to be left alone.
If anyone has said to you,
"Don't touch me!"
you know the time to
refrain from embracing.
But it seems to be more than that.
It seems simply that
sometimes embracing
only exacerbates the trauma,
only makes matters worse.
You sense it;
you refrain-
as painful as
refraining might be.
In another difficult observation
the author of Ecclesiastes
says there is
"a time to seek and a time to lose."
An obscure writer,
Clarence Day (1874-1935),
wrote what he entitled
Farewell, My Friends.
In a jocular style,
he told his friends
"I'm off to seek the Holy Grail.
I cannot tell you why."
Does every human being
seek a "Holy Grail" of some kind?
The fulfillment of an ambition,
the achievement of some personal goal,
the success that will
dramatically change life for the better,
that personal contentment
which so frequently
slips through human grasp.
Ecclesiastes' author
agrees that such times occur.
But he provides that
inevitable caveat:
there is "a time to lose."
No one wants to lose.
Ask any player of games.
Ask yourself.
Yet the nature of life,
as Ecclesiastes' preacher discovered,
is that times occur when we lose.
You will not fulfill every ambition,
you will not retain every love,
you will not hold life totally together,
you will not win every "battle."
That is the nature of life:
be prepared to lose
a major part of life
as well as a minor part occasionally.
To experience such a loss
does not mean
God is punishing you.
That is simply what life is like:
a time to seek and
a time to lose.
From seeking and losing,
the preacher lays on
another hard truth:
there is "a time to keep and
a time to throw away."
Is the preacher
talking about attics, closets, and garages?
Or does he address
something more fundamental?
Is he talking about
whatever keeps us
from progressing personally,
what blocks our way
toward whatever
private goals
we set for ourselves?
Maybe the attic,
the closets, and
the garage
provide symptoms of
the status of the soul.
Maybe what is outside of us
portrays us on the inside.
Maybe what we insist on keeping-
the clutter of the soul-
denies life to us.
What clutter of the soul
does anyone discard?
Look inside yourself!
Only you can tell yourself
what is worth keeping and
what should be thrown away.
But the point is this:
some personal aspects of life
are worth keeping and
some worth throwing away.
That is the nature of life.
Another seemingly strange observation
by the preacher follows:
there is "a time to tear, and
a time to sew."
Again, we cannot imagine that
the preacher
talks literally of tearing and sewing.
But if not, what does he talk about?
Maybe this:
Life is like a garment
that has become
too big or too small.
What your life has become
no longer fits you.
You are larger than your life, or
your life is smaller than you.
Your life has gone out of style.
Something must be done.
Alterations are required!
Tear out the old threads and seams,
whatever they might be.
You know what they are.
You sometimes
talk to yourself about them.
"I'm going to stop doing this," or
"I'm going to start doing that," or simply
"I am going to change!"
Ralph Waldo Emerson
offers a thought in that vein:
"For everything you have missed,
you have gained something else;
and for everything you gain,
you lose something."(2)
So it is when we alter
the garment we call life.
Now the preacher in Ecclesiastes
lays on us an observation
that sometimes stings.
He says there is "a time to keep silence."
How difficult that is-
to remain silent
when we think or
know we are right.
To be wise enough
to know when
to hold one's tongue.
To be wise enough
to back off when
you know that
merely one more word from you
will tip the scale
in the wrong direction.
A man whom I cannot identify
offered these words on silence:
" . . . it is no time for words
when the wounds are fresh and bleeding;
no time for homilies when
the lightning's shaft has smitten
and the [person] lies
stunned and stricken;
Then let the comforter
be silent;
let him sustain by his presence,
not by his preaching;
by his sympathetic silence,
not by his speech."(3)
Recall Aesop's fable of
the fox and the crow.
Ambling through the forest,
fox sees a crow in a tree.
The crow holds in his mouth
a delicious morsel of cheese, and
the fox wants it.
But how to get crow
to open his mouth and
thus drop the cheese.
Fox decides to flatter crow, and
crow, unable to keep his mouth shut,
opens it and drops the cheese
into fox's jaws.
For everything there is a season-
a time to keep one's mouth shut.
But, Ecclesiastes' preacher says,
there is "a time to speak."
To say the right thing
at the right time.
Words that comfort,
words that heal,
words that forgive,
words that fit the occasion and
the human need.
At last the preacher in Ecclesiastes
touches the heart:
there is a time to love.
But that observation
might make us wonder:
Is there ever a time
not to love?
Is there ever a time
to fail
at the fundamental ingredient
of life with one another?
Yes! Says the preacher.
There is a time to hate
what is hateful.
There is a time to hate
even one's self
when one's self
proves anything
but loving and loveable.
Author James Baldwin,
in his book Notes of a Native Son (1955),
considering himself and hatred, wrote:
"My life, my real life, was in danger,
and not from anything other people might do
but from the hatred I carried in my own heart."(4)
Moving from love and hate,
the preacher's last observation
relates to war and peace.
There is a time for war, and a time for peace.
How unnerving
that there should be
a time for war;
how promising that there should be
a time for peace.
That observation-
could it be more timely?
To bear the burden
of choosing a time for war.
To bear the burden
of making the choices
that create peace.
To end his observations
with peace!
How pertinent!
For without peace
all other observations about life
stagger to remain upright.
Into that context
of conflicting observations about life
comes Jesus Christ.
And Jesus Christ leads the apostle Paul
to leave us with this benediction:
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus."
1. J. H. Bromley
2. Compensation.
3. John Lorimer
4. Title essay