The Fields Before Us
On time, work, and the quiet faithfulness of ordinary life
Good morning, Reader,
I hope you are doing well. We’re back to a Saturday posting this week. Tomorrow, before the sun rises, I’ll be on my way to San Antonio for an event at the start of the week.
The sun is creeping over the horizon. The birds are already gossiping and chattering away, letting whoever else is awake know that the day has begun.
I’m sandwiched between two children and a pillow on our living room couch after “camping out”, something we do most Fridays or Saturdays.
Last night, I took my oldest daughter to her school’s father-daughter dance; the second one of the year. How time has begun to fly.
“The years start coming and they don’t stop coming,” as Smash Mouth once said.
That, and many other things, have been mulling around in my mind. There is a time. There is a purpose. There is a plan for everything.
How, then, should one carry himself?
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says, “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
Many of us recall the verses that follow:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.
I’ve always appreciated the matter-of-factness of this passage.
We often hear it at weddings, graduations, funerals and moments that mark transitions in life, reminding us of the times set before us.
But verses 14 and 22 have been what linger for me:
“I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.” — Ecclesiastes 3:14–15
“I saw that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his work, for that is his lot. Who can bring him to see what will be after him?” — Ecclesiastes 3:22
If God has fixed the times, then our task is not to control them, but to faithfully live, labor, and rejoice within what He has given.
These verses reverberate within me as a reader and as a man walking the King’s Road with hope, confidence, steadiness, and a humble gratitude for the grace and mercies given to me, though undeserved.
There was a time when I did not believe I had a future.
I did not believe I would live past nineteen or twenty and I had accepted that.
Even after passing those years, I did not believe I would see thirty.
I was lost in the darkness of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. My soul wandering through a cratered, foul-smelling spiritual no man’s land, on my way to Sheol. The tinge of sulfur and the singe of hell’s fire always near my feet.
But Christ.
Now I sit here, looking out through the window into the trees, far more blessed than I deserve.
A little more sore than I was yesterday morning.
A little more gray in my beard.
A refill of coffee soon needed.
Verse 14 comes to mind again.
Whatever God, Yahweh, Jehovah Jireh, the great I AM has set into motion cannot be undone. He knows my path both past and present and has guided my steps in His mercy and grace, as He will yours.
There is deep comfort in that.
Recently, I’ve written about being tired, about searching for simplicity, about Christ sustaining me. He has and He will continue to do so.
My King is a good King.
And so I return to verse 22:
To work.
To toil.
To rejoice in that work.
My King, family, vocation.
I will rejoice in Him.
The days may be long.
Emotions may run high.
Uncertainty may creep in.
But of this I am certain: God, the Creator of the universe, is good. Through Christ the King, I have been redeemed by His blood.
The rest will fall according to His good plan.
I will rejoice in my work, both professional and personal, because I know I am destined for another country.
My home is not of this world.
While I am here, I will lean into the burdens, the woes, and the difficulties of life because my King is with me.
I will teach my children, who are growing so quickly, truth and His ways.
To raise them to be strong, but humble.
Resolute, but kind.
To understand that in all things, the King has a plan.
The time for planting and tending the garden for my family is now.
What have I discovered in my search for simplicity?
That it was and has been right in front of me all along.
By reading His Word, I see the tasks and responsibilities before me.
I have found simplicity.
His ways are forever good.
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”
— The Return of the King
The times and happenings are not ours to master, but the fields before us are.
