Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

Year A - New Years

January 1, 2014

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

Would that we had a better sense of past and future. This is not to be able to outdo G*D, but to better find our place of “enough” which is an important source of happiness.

Our sense of the future is always rosier than our actions of the day warrant. We are very capable of taking a piece of today and extrapolating it into a utopia. We can conveniently ignore all the intended and unintended consequences of breaking relationships with one another over the slightest of slights that we let build up over time. A more realistic view of what a possible next step is in light of a much larger step that will then become possible is sadly lacking. We don’t educate for tomorrow by learning how to learn and teaching to the test will never prepare us for a new opportunity.

Our sense of the past is always truncated and revised according to what will serve us in the present. History books for elementary and secondary students are notoriously written from a perspective that justifies the power arrangements of the present. We could help ourselves immensely by sharpening decision-making based on what actually brought us to this current moment. Our tendency to turn inconvenient prophets into acceptable saints is long and storied. In so doing we remove their power and put it in the hands of the reigning paradigm.

There is a time and a season for every matter. That is now. This is not an easy place to live in. Note the dualities mentioned here that are available at every moment. This is the business G*D has placed before us—choice. Will you eat of one tree or another or none? Will you still walk and talk together in the cool of the evening, even of hard things and confessions, or not? Will you be your sister and brother’s keeper, or not? Will you be realistic about your past and practical about your future, or not? Will you expand those categories to our past and our future, or not?

If you saw your context being that of abundance to eat and drink and the ever availability of pleasure, would your choice to keep or throw away be different? Would you stay and work where you are or would you pick up and shift to other work?

These are not so much resolutions as foundations for being blessed and blessing. May this time next year find you more clearly blessed and more evidently blessing.