jim henson

In reading the Old Testament Mass reading from Ecclesiastes on Friday, I found myself focusing not on the familiar "for everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven" made so popular in the 1960's song, Turn, Turn, Turn by the Byrds, but on the final verse, Ecclesiastes 1:11.

What does a man gain for the efforts that he makes? I contemplate the task that God gives mankind to labour at. All that he does is apt for its time; but though he has permitted man to consider time in its wholeness, man cannot comprehend the work of God from beginning to end.

Mankind is allowed to see "time in its wholeness".  Because we can step back and realize that we were born and that we will die, that the earth was created and that it will one day cease to exist, we often make the mistake of thinking that we therefore control all that is around us.

But, all our problems and struggles are meant to make us realize that, in fact, we control nothing.  "Man cannot comprehend the work of God" the bible tells us.  Yet, God, sees "from beginning to end."  For Him, it is already accomplished.

All our labors, all the divisions that exist between individuals and nations, are useless struggling against the "work of God" which is seen *only* by God, for He sees "from beginning to end."