Sunday 23rd April
Read Ecclesiastes 3:9-15
“What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil – this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure for ever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
15 Whatever is has already been,
and what will be has been before;
and God will call the past to account.” (NIVUK)
The last line of this passage is challenging to understand. The translation we have above suggests that somehow God will judge the past, yet more literally it reads ‘God seeks the pursued’. In the Hebrew it is quite clear, but the variation in translation betrays our inability to quite work out what is meant!
One approach is to ask what it is that God pursues. In the context of this magnificent passage describing the many and various ways in which God is in control of everything and knows the end from the beginning then God pursues his own purposes and seeks to bring them to completion.
His work is perfect, his ways are just and they will endure forever, inspiring awe (or fear) from humbled humanity (v14). Yet that truth is also of immense comfort. If we are called according to God’s purposes and we ‘know that everything God does will endure forever’ then it is a blessing to be pursued and sought by a gracious God…
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” (Romans 8:28-30) (NIVUK)
