Reflection Questions : Ecclesiastes 3.1-22

1. Have you ever had an experience where you found it hard to adapt to a new circumstance? For example- adapting to married life, adapting to having a new born, adapting to full time work, adapting to retirement. What helped you respond to the new season of life? 

2. Ecclesiastes 3.1-8 describes the seasons of life by a series of opposites. There is a time to be born and a time to die and and by implication a time for everything in between (v2). In other words, these opposites are a poetic way of saying that all of life is covered by seasons, from pole to pole and everything in between. The various seasons also reflect different dimensions of human life, whether: life considered from the perspective of biological growth and development (birth – death v2); the agricultural and economic (plant- uproot v2); the politician and the national (war – peace v8) etc. Each season has an appropriate activity attached to it. Using Ecclesiastes 3.1-8 and reflecting on Sunday’s message, what activities do you feel are relevant in your season of life?

3. What is so fascinating about Ecclesiastes 3.1-8 is that we human creatures are unable to  change the seasons. The seasons (and their right responses) are in God’s hands. This points to the reality of God’s power over the seasons of our lives. While he comes to us in our stories, he is also beyond them, beyond time, and has authority and power over the seasons of our lives. Modern secular people struggle to accept God’s power over the passing seasons of their lives, and struggle to adapt to the new seasons he has set. A fruitful discussion is to reflect on the last season of life, on this earth. What are apt activities for us, when we are approaching death? 

 

4. Chapter 3v9-11 are key verses in this chapter. Let us consider them. 

3:9    What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

a. How do we toil and toil, strive and strive, trying to force outcomes that are untimely (v9-10)? 

b. Who makes work fruitful, each endeavour, in its own time (v11)? 

c. What is our problem or tension, according to v11?

d. What do all the passing seasons make us long to see? 

5. Read verses 15-17. What work of God do we long for when we see injustice? Does the wisdom preacher believe a time for justice is coming? Discuss. 

6. How does the revelation of Jesus in the New Testament satisfy our longings for eternity and justice? Discuss, referring to specific passages. 

7. What is God saying to you about the season you are in, and how you should respond? How does this passage help us persevere even when we live with unsatisfied longings?