Timeless Stirrings and Ecclesiastes

Today is the birthday of my youngest child, Max, he is one year old.  It has been a graced year.  Graced with the quiet stirrings of the immortal God in my heart.  Stirrings that are so easily overlooked, but in God's mercy, I had an infant who forced me to stop, allowing me just be present to Him; while I was nursing Max or simply just holding him and rocking or walking, walking, walking.  And in those moments of nothingness, where I am not doing anything of high material value, moments where I am living the Gospel (albeit very imperfectly)  in such ordinary and unnoticed ways:  feeding, clothing, comforting,  if I am very quiet and still in my soul (because, you can be sure that there is not much quiet and stillness externally with very young children all around) my heart surges with thanksgiving, and here I can just begin perceive the eternal presence of God.

These thoughts brought to mind our OCBS study of Ecclesiastes and a verse from that book that whispers in my heart at these times, because these moments are so fleeting, and yet I want to cling to them not ever letting them go!  Alas!  And since I am celebrating a birthday today, I did not have time for a proper Scripture post soI thought that I would indulge myself and share, along with a video montage I made for my son's first year, my past musings on this verse!

       “He has made everything appropriate to its time and has put the timeless into their hearts, without men ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.” ( Ecclesiastes 3:11)

 I would love to freeze particular moments in which that sweet coalescence of joy, peace and security that in the blink of an eye are here and then scurry off only a moment later.   In these moments I can feel a stirring of the timeless in my heart.  Joy and thanksgiving surge forth from me, yet I also feel sorrow because I live in time and these perceptions and moments are so fleeting, and so other worldly.  They lift me out of time for an instant, and pierce my heart with an intense yearning for the eternal.  Are these moments invitations for a deeper meditation on things of heaven?  Did moments such as these, fleeting and passing, with no hope or expectation of them ever reoccurring, spur Qoheleth's deep questions?   With no afterlife to look to it must have been like a cruel joke to have such a yearning for the eternal in the heart with no possible way to satisfy it!

As each year passes in the lives of my children I strain to implant the memory of how they looked and talked; of the things they did that made me frustrated or made me laugh, or broke my heart with the beauty of it all.  I have taken countless pictures and written endlessly in journals just so I can cling to the memory of moments of perfection lost to time.  Yet, I still forget and I know that I have lost moments and memories in my life to the passage of time.   I pray to God, who has put that timeless yearning in my heart, to help me to follow the wisdom in the ponderings of Ecclesiastes:  To be faithful and attentive to the season that I am in.  I am thankful for the wisdom that says enjoy this moment now and do not worry about how time may fade the memory:    “For he will hardly dwell on the shortness of his life, because God lets him busy himself with the joy of his heart.”( Ecc 5:19) And beyond that I put my eternal hope in Christ, who makes all things new,(Rev.21:5)  and who does not put a yearning in my heart  that cannot be fulfilled.  Even in Ecclesiastes we hear an echo of this verse:  Verse 3:15 says "what now is has already been; what is to be, already is; and God restores what would otherwise be displaced." 

 Ecclesiastes vividly shows that this fulfillment is not to be had during our days under the sun. I can release my vain grasping at past happiness, it prevents me from living and enjoying the simple, fleeting pleasures of the time I am living in now.  Ecclesiastes highlights the problem of futility that only Christ can satisfactorily answer.  And as my heart is pierced with the joy and blessing of His eternal stirrings, awoken in the precious minutes with my children, I am learning to let it flow into to One who put that timelessness into my heart and the One who makes all things new!

Happy Birthday Max!  

 Peace an Grace to all!

Heidi