A time for pessimism?
I just finished reading Ecclesiastes. How could something with poetry as beautiful as this:
end up with an outlook that is so negative? I thought I would find Job to be depressing (and it was), but Ecclesiasties has such a pessimistic tone. "Everything is meaningless." Are we ever guilty of having that kind of attitude? Is it possible for God to work through us if "everything is meaningless?" Will we ever try something new if we think that "there is nothing new under the sun?"Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 A Time for Everything:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time
to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.
posted by Kim at 9:42 PM
1 Comments:
Hi Sandpiper,
I wrote a sermon a few years ago on this passage, and in that sermon I included the line, "Quoheleth was one depressed dude." Yet God works through that despair,and forever leads to light, though not on the surface- context of that book.
I am Rev. Jeffrey Kanode. I am on the Conference Children and Poverty team. I am designing a bulletin insert to be given to all of our churches to use on Children's Sabbath. This bulletin insert will be presented at Annual Conference in June. J.F. Lacaraia, through Jim McKay, had a coupy of your poem "Brightly Colored Beads" which he then shared with me. We would really like to use the poem in the Children's Sabbath bulletin insert. May we? Space, however, may become an issue. We may not be able to use the poem in total, so then we would need to find a way to use it while still "making sense," since "Brightly Colored Beads" contains a narrative within which gives the poem its full meaning. So, would you be willing to work with me on a revision of the poem to make it fit the bulletin space we have?
I don't have an account on here as of yet. Please email me at kanodejeffrey@hotmail.com
You are very talented,
Thank you and God bless.
In Christ's service,
Rev. Jeffrey C. Kanode
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