“He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” (Eccl. 3:11)
The more one lives in this sin-cursed world, the more one acquires a strong sense that things are not as they ought to be. To use the language of Ecclesiastes, the world is “bent” or crooked (1:15; 7:13), thrown off-kilter in a very fundamental way. Thus it is a world that frequently cuts against the grain of our deepest intuitions: where the race doesn’t always go to the swift, or the battle to the strong, or bread to the wise, or riches to the intelligent. “Time and chance happen to them all” (9:11), and often in a way that offends our natural sense of justice and righteousness.
This world, in other words, is one where the wicked sometimes prosper; where liars, for a time, get away with falsehood; where infants die and good desires are left unfulfilled. “Bent” really is the perfect word for it. For it implies a sense of what should be, but not the full realization of it. Like a hand with three fingers or a marriage without love, there persists in this world a profound level of disharmony and lack—of privation and discontinuity. We retain a strong sense of what ought to be, but everywhere we find things falling just short of the ideal, turning at the last second away from their intended end.
In this world, flowers are planted, and very often grow, but many of them stop short of full bloom.
A Symphony of Vanity
It would be easy in the face of such pervasive dissonance to draw the conclusion that all the events of our lives are completely unguided, that we are all simply leaves in a windstorm, subject to a thousand forces beyond ourselves and totally helpless in the fray. But this would be a mistake. For, as much as Ecclesiastes stresses the confusion and disharmony of our present existence, equally strong is the affirmation that all of it is overseen by the wisdom and power of Almighty God.
Who has bent this world, but the Lord of Hosts? It is “the work of God” (7:13). Who can straighten what He has made crooked? There is a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh—and all of it is by His design. Thus the world may be bent, but it is purposefully bent; it may be crooked, but it is crooked by divine appointment.
Moreover, the Preacher assures us that our world has not been bent simply for the sake of it. God is no sadist. Rather, it has been bent for the same reason that an artist mixes darker colours with lighter, so that together they might rise above the mundane and mediocre and bring us closer to that sight of something truly beautiful, truly lovely. “He has made everything beautiful in its time,” is the conclusion of the Preacher (3:11). And we may take it as a fact. We do not yet see the whole picture, but God has told us that there is a picture, and that is deep comfort indeed.
Christmas Hope
So where does this leave us? Well, Christmas is on the horizon, and as it approaches it bears with it this reminder: that God does indeed make everything beautiful in its time.
The world was dark when Christ was born, filled with all manner of tyrants and strangeness, sinners and rebels, and its fair share of injustice, too. But none of it, importantly, was random. None of it was out of step. Even Augustus, then ruler of the world, was just one more colour on the Artist’s palette, when he ordered the census that would send Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. All was arranged, all was ordered, all was governed, not by the will of man or devils, but by Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will (Eph. 1:11).
This God had commanded the birth of a Saviour, the arrival of a great Light, and to Him every atom leapt in joyful obedience. To Him the camels moved in happy submission as they carried the Magi over desert sands; to Him even old Herod, in the very attempt to undo what God had done, bowed his head in unwitting acquiescence. All transpired according to the “definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). All moved according to the Author’s purpose. Not one event was disordered or out of place, though you would never know it looking at it from the inside.
Christmas, then, in a very real sense, is Solomon’s vindication. It is the much-needed reminder that the world and all its motions dance according to the lead of omnipotent Wisdom and not the coercive pressure of tyranny and power.
It may appear otherwise—at times it often does. But there is always more going on than meets the eye. Indeed, if we learn anything from the Christmas story this year, let it be this: that God does His finest work in the darkest hour. And when all hope seems lost, and every event appears smothered in irrelevance, that is the moment when the Light is just about to break. That is the moment when God is working all things great and small toward a glorious conclusion.
Take Heart
Now, if your heart baulks at this thought, and, try as you might, you simply cannot see how the swirling mass of life is anything other than random, then I urge you: look to the Baby in the manger. For there upon the hay, wrapped in swaddling cloths, lies Heaven’s greatest gift—and a thundering affirmation that beauty will triumph over chaos.
Yes, the world is bent, but Christ is born! And with His arrival comes the sure and certain hope that what is crooked will soon be made straight, what is futile will give way to joyful consummation, and what has been lost is on the very brink of being restored. The whole earth trembles with eager anticipation; the creation shudders at the prospect of immanent liberty. Why should we be downcast and despairing?
We have only to wait “a little while” (1 Pet. 5:10).
“But Sam lay back, and stared with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last he gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’
‘A great Shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed, and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then, as a sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.”
(Tolkien, Return of the King, 951-52).
Amen!