For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven, a time to break down and a time to build up. –Ecclesiastes 3:1-3

We all have had our early encounters with time. My friend often tells me a story he still dreams about at night. It is a simple story that has him running to catch his daily commuter train when he was a small boy on his way to school. The problem was that he was often late and used the train tracks as a shortcut to the station. His continuing nightmare is that he gets run over by the approaching train’s locomotive. One of the first things our parents teach us as we grow up is to be punctual–on time! Later in life we look at time as a separate dimension by learning how to plan our days, our lives. There are stationary stores full of “Daily Planners” to help us organize our time and at work or play we find people keeping time of almost everything. An Arabian saying even has it that “Time is like a sword, if you don’t know how to handle it, it will cut you.” All this suggests that we are in control of our time on this earth. But are we really?

What the Great Teacher, the author of Ecclesiastes, wants to tell us is: We are subject to times and changes over which we have little or no control and to think anything different contrasts with God’s eternity and sovereignty. God predetermines all our life’s activities. We gain this insight by faith and faith will enable us to say “Now is the Time” to do God’s work.