Beauty from Afar

10 I have seen the business that God has given to the sons of men to be busy with. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time; also he has put eternity into man's mind, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; 13 also that it is God's gift to man that every one should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil. 14 I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has made it so, in order that men should fear before him. Ecclesiastes 3:10-14.

I was driving home last Saturday evening from Kansas City to St. Louis along Highway 70. As I approached St. Louis, the sun was behind me in the west. I watched as a huge thunderstorm formed in front of me and built up as I drove east. Pretty soon the lightening started to flash in the distance. What struck me was how beautiful it was watching it from afar. Yet, the prior week a storm like this had knocked out power to 700,000 families in St. Louis. When it gets to 102 degrees F on a summer day, the loss of one's electricty can cause some pain. I thought of the above verse. God makes everything beautiful "in its time". A storm from afar can be a wonderfully awesome thing to watch....until it is bearing down on you! But, it really fits with the rest of the verse that God has put "eternity" into man's mind. I think the writer was saying that we all were made for a piece of God to fit inside us. It is what sets us aparts from the animal kingdom. We were made in "His image". Yet, the scripture declares that we cannot figure out the great design of God "from the beginning to the end". We all want to know! But, if we could figure it out, God would not be God and we would not need faith. It is enough for the writer to suggest, that in the end, we must learn to live in the moment and give thanks for what we have. Happiness comes from a relationship with a living God. Not from knowing things....or possessing things. God is still in charge. Whatever happens is still under his sovereignity. In the end, it is that way so that man should "fear before him". The beginning of true knowledge begins with the fear of the Lord.