Today's Bible Reading: ECCLESIASTES 1:12-6:12
Ecclesiastes 3:11
He has made everything beautiful in its time.
Life is filled with tragedy. It is marred by events and episodes that we can’t seem to make sense of. We are at a loss to understand why they occurred and what will come from them. From our perspective we don’t see the beauty in them. Yet Solomon sees them different. He sees beyond what is before him to what will become of it. He views it like a Phoenix arising that brings beauty even from the ashes caused by life’s anguish.
Solomon sets forth in the text several aspects of our comfort in times of agony. He tells us of the author of our comfort, the arena of our comfort and the arrival of our comfort. He writes “He has made” signifying the source of our comfort. It is God who makes and manipulates all things. Nothing exists apart from Him. He is the author of all things. John the apostle states, “All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.” (John 1:3). Paul agrees when he writes, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible . . . all things were created through him and for him.” (Col 1:16). Everything is created and controlled by Him. Nothing happens without Him. As a result, He can bring triumph from tragedy. He can make sense out of the senseless. He can make what has been broken beautiful again. David says, “let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones that you have broken rejoice” (Ps 51:8).
God is not partial or selective in rebuilding what we see as ruined. He works in the “everything” arena. There is nothing that is out of His reach or beyond His repair. A marred marriage, a fracture family, a financial failure or a debilitating disease are all within His realm of repair. His care and concern extends to everything that we will ever experience or encounter. This should bring us great comfort and consolation in times of crisis. There is absolutely nothing that He can’t make right. There is no mistake that we have made or mishap that has materialized that He can’t make beautiful. There is nothing done to us or done by us that is excluded or exempt from His “everything” sphere. Everything means everything. What has been belittled, beguiled, broken, battered, and beaten down will be made beautiful by the one who makes all things beautiful. As Isaiah prophesied of Jesus, “he was pierced for our transgression; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” (Is 53:5). Our peace came from His pain. God made beauty arise from His beatings. If God can make the broken body of His precious son beautiful, He can make your brokenness beautiful too. Count on it.
But we must understand that God doesn’t work on our time but in His time. Our text says, He makes “everything beautiful in its time.” In other words, he determines “its” time. Everything may not be beautiful now, but give it time. Time tests things, time turns things, and time transforms things. Time will tell. So, beauty somehow emerges if we give it time. Don’t worry if beauty is delayed, things of value take time. The beauty of a diamond is forged through intense pressure and extended time. A fine wine ages over time. Don’t let your present problem or pain discourage you to despair, rather turn to and trust the one who makes all things beautiful “in its time.” The Israelites waited over 400 years to be freed from their Egyptian slavery (Ex 12:41) and then another 40 years before they arrived at their long-awaited promised land. The disciples waited three agonizing days for the beauty of the risen Savior to emerge from His rocky tomb. Like a beautiful butterfly that appears in “its time” from its cocoon, so we must wait for God’s timing to make what is mangled magnificent and what is broken beautiful. We can’t rush beauty, time will tell.
Thank God that He makes things beautiful. Ask Him to help you to be patient as He makes beauty arise from your brokenness. Thank Him that there is nothing that you have done or that has been said about you or done to you that He can’t make beautiful. Thank Him for the comfort that this verse brings in the midst of your greatest calamities. Ask Him to help you anticipate the beauty that will arise from the ashes of your agony.
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