Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Beginnings and endings: Day after day, everyday (Week 4)

Saturday 6 February 2010

Everything that happens
has happened before
and all that will be has already been –
God does everything
over and over again. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)

Sometimes there seem to be no beginnings and endings – just things going on as before – on and on.

Everything that happens
has happened before
and all that will be has already been –
God does everything
over and over again. (Ecclesiastes 3:15)

The writer notes that this cycle can seem like a blessing and a curse. The poet and Benedictine oblate Kathleen Norris too observes that the rhythms of daily life, and of the universe itself, the everyday glory of sunrise and sunset and all the ‘present moments’ in between may seem a disgusting repetition.

Sometimes the on and on is exactly what we need, we engage with the daily tasks of life and work and it gives us the necessary rhythm to live by. Sometimes is seems like a drudgery and meaningless. Yet engaging in the now and the ordinary is our salvation and a gift from God.

Everything God has done will last for ever: nothing he does can ever be changed, God has done all this, so that we will worship him.(Ecclesiastes 3 v.14)

I know the best thing we can do is always to enjoy life, because God’s gift to us is the happiness we get from our food and drink and from the work we do. (v.13)

Can we always understand our time? Know what God is about in this?

God makes everything happen at the right time. Yet none of us can ever fully understand all he has done, and he puts question in our minds about the past and the future. (v.11)

How do we see our daily lives? The mundane things? As gift or curse?

Kirsty