Author: Calleen Hough

Practice makes perfect

The concept of time is relative to experience. The more experience we have with something, the less we become aware of time while doing it. Therefore, the more we do something, the less time it seems to take. Eventually, we may reach a level of experience where we lose track of time or become completely unaware of time while doing something. It is at that point when eternity or “time out of mind” (5769) begins to make sense to us.

Solomon said that “to every purpose there is time and judgment” (Ecclesiastes 8:6) and “better is the end of a thing than the beginning” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). Sometimes we avoid a certain experience because we think we won’t like it or it might turn out badly. Therefore, we do not reach a point where we can see things from an eternal perspective. For example, a person gets divorced and decides to never remarry because the breakup was too painful.

Solomon said, “then I beheld all the work of God, that a man cannot find out the work that is done” (Ecclesiastes 8:17). The words translated work and done are associated with practice. They refer to something that is done habitually, a lifestyle that has become a way of life. It is difficult to get an eternal perspective on something if you only do it once, especially if you don’t get to see the outcome or end result. From an eternal perspective, a bad result is better than no result if you learn from your mistake.

 

Wasted effort

My dad was an entrepreneur and over the course of his life was involved in at least a dozen business ventures. As a result, he experienced a lot of what Solomon referred to as “sore travail” (Ecclesiastes 4:8). Solomon said, “For a dream cometh through the multitude of business; and a fool’s voice is know by a multitude of words” (Ecclesiastes 5:3). I think my dad believed in the American Dream, the idea that a person can go from rags to riches if he is willing to work hard and pay his dues. At the time of his death, my dad owned properties that he estimated to be worth about $300,000. It was a fortune to him, but insignificant compared to the current value of the first home he and my mom bought 50 years ago. They lost the house in a bankruptcy due to a failed business.

I think there are many people who work more than is really necessary and those who don’t work enough. In my own case, I worked very hard for 14 years and then I retired. I realized toward the end of my career that I didn’t have a life outside of work, and if I didn’t do something about it, I was going to end up like my dad, alone and miserable.

Solomon said, “If a man beget an hundred children and live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, and also that he have no burial; I say, that an untimely birth is better than he” (Ecclesiastes 6:3). What Solomon was implying was that none of the man’s hundred children cared enough about him to give him a decent burial, therefore, his life was a waste.

In his time

Solomon said, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1). If you think of the world as God’s possession, then the purpose of every thing in the world is to bring God pleasure; it exists for his delight (2656). Another way of looking at purpose is desire and from that perspective comes the will of God, that which the Lord voluntarily chooses to or decides to do in the life of every person.

Solomon said of God, “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). There are two types of time operating in the universe in which we exist. One is the time that we are aware of, which can be measured by a duration (6256), and the second is the time that we are not aware of, what is referred to as eternity (5703). These two types of time are related to each other and are used by God to make every thing beautiful.

One of the ways that God translates time that is of a specific duration into eternity, or time without end, is through relationships that are restored after many years of having no contact. I was recently reunited with a friend I hadn’t had contact with for more than 40 years. I couldn’t remember her face or the sound of her voice, but when we reconnected, I knew it was my friend.

Solomon said, “God requireth that which is past” (Ecclesiastes 3:15). The word translated requireth, baqash basically means “‘to seek’ to find something that is lost or missing, or, at least, whose location is unknown” (1245). I believe it gave God pleasure to reunite me with my friend and it happened at a time when both of us were seeking God’s will. I was not a Christian when my friend and I first met and our friendship dissolved after I was raped. Our first meeting after we reconnected happened to take place at the church I attend.

In his explanation of the benefit of relationships, Solomon said, “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). The same word is translated lift up and help in this passage. The Hebrew word qûwm (koom) means not only to arise and stand up, but also to come about and is “used to denote the inevitable occurrence of something predicted or prearranged” (6965).

Often times, I believe our purpose is dependent on other people. In order for God’s will to be accomplished, a relationship must be restored. That’s why time, in the sense of measureable duration, is required for God to make every thing beautiful, because he has to wait for us to reconnect with the person that can lift us up.

A more excellent way

The saying “ignorance is bliss” is probably more true than most people realize. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived said, “for in much wisdom is much grief and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow” (Ecclesiastes 1:18). I remember distinctly how I felt the night I found out my husband was having an affair. It was like a knife had pierced my heart. I sobbed uncontrollably and laid awake all night trying to process what I had heard. The pain was so severe, I actually thought the truth might kill me.

There were many times after that night that I wished my husband hadn’t told me what was going on. I wondered why he couldn’t have kept it to himself. I wanted to go back to the way things were when I thought he was a good man that could never do such a thing. My husband was a Christian, at least that was what he had led me to believe.

At the end of his life, Solomon looked back and decided “that wisdom excelleth folly, as far as light excelleth darkness” (Ecclesiastes 2:13). The word translated excelleth, yithrown means preeminence or surpassing all others (3504). Yithrown is derived from the word yathar which means to exceed or excel (3498). Sometimes the word yathar indicates survivors and reflects the idea of a remnant, such as when Israel is dispersed throughout the world and a remnant survives and returns to the Promised Land. (Ezekiel 6:8).

It was very difficult for me to see the reality of what was going on around me and to know the truth about my marriage. As time went on, I was able to trust God and learn from my experience. Ultimately, I became a different person and began to understand what I had done wrong and why my marriage had failed.

Confession

Between the ages of four and seven, my sister and I were molested by our brother. Because I am almost four years older than my sister, her abuse started about the same time mine ended. One year, when we were on a family vacation, my two brothers, sister, and I were in a truck camper on our way to Arkansas. While I was taking a nap, my two brothers molested my sister. I woke up in the middle of it, but pretended to be asleep so that they wouldn’t know I was listening and could tell what was going on. I never told anyone about it. Several years later, I was raped while spending the night at a friend’s house. I only recently realized the circumstances of the two events was very similar. It felt as if I was being punished for not protecting my sister because I could have stopped her abuse.

Solomon said, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Happy is the man that feareth always: but he that hardeneth his heart shall fall into mischief” (Proverbs 28:13-14). According to Solomon, confessing and forsaking our sins can prevent our hearts from becoming hardened because when we receive God’s mercy we are then able to be merciful to others. The Hebrew word translated mercy, racham means to have compassion or show pity to someone and racham is also translated as love (7355). Mercy is at the heart of salvation and it was modeled by Jesus as he died on the cross.

I believe the process of hardening a heart begins at an early age, perhaps when we are as young as two years old. The tendency we have to rebel against our parents is the same tendency that causes us to rebel against God. I know it was a hard heart that made me keep silent instead of helping my sister and I was only about eight at the time. Today, because of what Jesus did on the cross, we can confess and forsake our sins at any time and receive God’s mercy. Just as the process of hardening the heart can go on for many years, I believe the process of unhardening or softening the heart can also take time. Thankfully, the condition of my heart has improved significantly since I accepted Christ.

What you see is what you get

Culture is an unseen force that causes us to become like the people we spend a lot of time with. Every family and organization has its own unique culture. The head of the family or leader of an organization plays an important role because members naturally follow his queue about what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior. That is why Christians need to be careful about who they associate with and what organizations they belong to.

Solomon stated in Proverbs 27, “Iron sharpeneth iron, so a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend” and “as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man to man” (Proverbs 27:17,19). In other words, we are a reflection of those around us. If you want to know what you are really like, take a close look at your friends.

The fool

In general, a fool is someone that believes in himself rather than God (191). It is possible for a person to have a relationship with God and still be a fool (3684). Solomon described the fool that knows God, but does not understand his ways, as being unreliable, a bad investment with regards to doing God’s work (Proverbs 26:6-9). And yet, Solomon said, “Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit? There is more hope for a fool than of him” (Proverbs 26:12). To be wise in one’s own conceit means that in one’s view or opinion it is possible to master the art of living. In other words, the man wise in his own conceit can figure things out on his own, he doesn’t need God’s input.

The word hope is often used figuratively in the Bible to convey the idea of expectations (8615). The word translated hope in Proverbs 26:12, tiqvah literally means a cord that is used to bind things together (6961) or as an attachment. In this sense, you could say that having hope is being attached to a certain outcome. You want something in particular to happen. The problem with being attached to a certain outcome is that we might be disappointed when things don’t turn out as we expect them to. That’s why it is foolish to get our hearts set on something that is not God’s will.

When I was a young Christian, I had my heart set on having a big family. After I was married, I had three children and then my husband had a vasectomy. For a long time, I thought he had made a mistake and might change his mind about having more children. When he didn’t, I became resentful and felt my husband had cheated me out of my right to have more children if I wanted to. Eventually, I became angry at God because I was stuck with a husband that didn’t want children. Now that I have reached the age where I am no longer able to have children, I realize that it was not God’s will for me to have more than three children. Because I have matured in my faith and understand God’s ways a little better, I am very thankful that I have three children. Compared to having no children, three seems like a big family.

Self-control

When we are born again, our spirits become alive. Like our bodies, our spirits grow and mature, and must be nourished in order to develop properly. We know our spirits are healthy if they are producing fruit (Galatians 5:22-23). One of the fruits of the spirit is referred to as temperance, which is the exercising of self-control (1468).

Solomon was talking about self-control in Proverbs 25:28 when he said, “He that hath no rule over his spirit is like a city that is broken down and without walls.” In other words, a lack of spiritual maturity leaves a person open  to attack. This is an interesting point because in Solomon’s time, people were not born again, the entire population of Israel was dead spiritually. That is why it was inevitable that the Israelites would end up in exile. They were spiritually defenseless.

Being born again doesn’t guarantee spiritual success. After I became a Christian, I read my Bible, attended church, and talked to God on a regular basis, but I still failed miserably with regards to spiritual growth. What I was lacking was spiritual exercise. The apostle Paul used the phrase “walk in the spirit” (Galatians 5:16) to describe spiritual exercise. What Paul meant was for us to allow the Holy Spirit to control our behavior. Really, self-control is not about us being in control, but the Holy Spirit overruling our sinful desires. We have to give him permission to do that.

It is natural to do what we want to. God made man with a free will, therefore, he respects our right to choose for ourselves what we do with our time on earth. When we choose to follow Christ, we are in essence saying that God knows better than we do what choices to make, and yet, most of the time we still do what we want to. It wasn’t until I became “like a city that is broken down, and without walls” (Proverbs 25:28) that I decided to exercise self-control and actually do what God told me to.

Memory

Buried deep within the unconscious mind are a million memories of things that have happened over a lifetime. It says in Proverbs 25:2 that “it is the glory of God to conceal a thing.” One of the reasons we cannot think as God does or understand his way of doing things is because we have so little access to the information that is stored in our brains. Most of the time we are inundated with too much information, more than our brains can process efficiently. Sometimes it may seem as if certain memories are hidden from us. It is as if they have been stored in a secret compartment that we no longer have access to.

Over the past few years, I have been going through a process of recovering memories associated with being raped when I was a teenager. During a conversation with my sister, I learned that she had shared information with someone that I thought was a secret between just the two of us. The knowledge of what had happened caused a shift in my thinking and suddenly everything connected to the event we were talking about became clear to me, it all made sense.

In spite of Solomon’s supernatural wisdom, it appears that he was unable to reflect on past mistakes or make sense of patterns in his own behavior. In Proverbs 25:3, Solomon said, “the heart of kings is unsearchable.” Solomon believed that God controlled his heart (Proverbs 21:1) to the extent that all his actions were divinely ordained. Solomon could not turn to the right or the left without God directing his footsteps (Proverbs 16:9), therefore his thought processes  were limited.

In order for us to understand why we do the things we do, we must be able to access our unconscious minds. It is possible that Solomon was referring to this when he said, “the heart of kings is unsearchable” because according to the Hebrew language, memory is an activity of the heart (3820). Just as trauma can cause various types of amnesia, so may God block certain memories in order to accomplish his purposes.

Compromise

Solomon’s wisdom was supernatural. His request for an understanding heart (1 Kings 3:9) was not about seeing things from a human perspective, but about seeing things from God’s perspective. Solomon’s wisdom enabled him to discern between good and evil and gave him experience in Divine things (2449). As a result of this understanding, it says in 2 Chronicles 8:11 that “Solomon brought up the daughter of Pharaoh out of the city of David unto the house that he built for her; for he said, My wife shall not dwell in the house of David king of Israel, because the places are holy whereunto the ark of the LORD hath come.”

Solomon’s solution of building a separate residence for his foreign wife was a compromise. Solomon didn’t want his marriage to interfere with God’s blessing on the nation of Israel, nor did he want to jeopardize his alliance with Pharaoh, so he came up with a solution that would keep everyone happy. In addition to his discernment of good and evil, Solomon also had prudence in secular matters. He was able to adapt what he knew to what he ought to do in any given situation.

The problem with Solomon’s compromise was it opened the door to secular worship practices in Israel. Solomon’s wife did not convert to Judaism, but remained an Egyptian both culturally and spiritually. She was afforded the luxury of living in God’s holy city without becoming holy herself. An example of this today is the person that goes to church every week, but never becomes a Christian. Solomon’s Egyptian wife never experienced conversion.