Golden hope

I only have to look across the street to know that the summer is past, and the winter is coming.  Half a year ago, my neighbor’s tree burst into a froth of pink to herald spring. With autumn, it’s a bristle of orange leaves, having dropped its pesky little knobs of crabapples. We’ve watched its turns of the seasons for decades. Recently, that blast of orange said something else to me:

For everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard those couplets from Ecclesiastes 3 many times. They’ve become timeworn in overuse and their context forgotten.  Kind of like First Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” often recited amidst candles and flowers at weddings without a nod to its context of spiritual unruliness.

The traditional author, King Solomon, through acclaimed as “wise,” also made poor choices in amassing wives and wealth. In this passage I’m hearing a sigh that what the world calls “happiness” won’t last forever.

But the Bible doesn’t end at Ecclesiastes.  It ends at Revelation.  With Christ returning again!  And with, for those who have died, a time to be raised to eternal life.

As I write this, we’re anticipating a call to announce that grandchild number three, a little girl expected by our daughter and husband, has arrived. A time to be born!  But within this past week, three older people I cared about experienced that “time to die.” I’m grateful that all of them lived fully for Jesus. One, aware that death would come soon as her kidneys failed, even called in her social friends and asked them plainly, “Will I see you in Heaven?  Have you accepted Jesus?”

Is that a question you can answer in the affirmative?