this too...

Lately I've been listening to the long list of sermons that are set to automatically download via podcast and then sit, unheard, in iTunes. At Mars Hill Bible Church, they did a series on the book of Ecclesiastes.
Sermon number 1: "lessons in vapor managment"
Turns out that the word "meaningless" is actually better-translated "vapor" or "mist," which isn't nothing and isn't without meaning, it's just passing. And that the book's author is showing that EVERYTHING in the realm of the created is temporary. And the ONLY permanent, non-vapor thing, is the uncreated: God and the spiritual realm.
But we end up spending a lot of time and energy and emotion on what Rob Bell calls "vapor management" -- not that it's all bad, but we do need to remember that all these things, like the early morning fog that creeps up the side of these green mountains, will vanish.

Sermon number 2, which I heard today while working in the garden: "a time"
Yeah, we all know the passage... there is a time for [a long list of contrasting actions]. Shane Hipps points out that most of the time we think of this as a list of things we should do at different points in our lives, but that it's really a list of a whole bunch of circumstances that we will experience between birth and death.
It's not a to do list. It's just stating the facts. And, reminding us that all these situations are vapor.
"He has made everything beautiful in its time" And the vapor is beautiful, even when it seems like a bad mist.
"He has also set eternity in the human heart" This point was really interesting for me: When we get tired of all the "vapor management," then we can learn to experience what Hipps explains as a state of joyful acceptance of the now. To stop obsessing over the past or anxiously awaiting the future.
Is this how Jesus lived, all the time?
Is this what He has been inviting me to experience all these months with the reminders to live in the present? Because I want that.

Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is within us. Solomon says that God has set eternity in our hearts.
Hipps suggests that Jesus came to show us the way into that peaceful, joyful, eternal kingdom; how to unlock the still water within us, that eternity in the midst of the ever-changing mist. And to do that, we need to 1. have a relationship with the Master and 2. be actively involved, choosing to live in the present, and be able to rest in the NOW
Then we can start to access the eternal, which is in our hearts, which also happens to be the recipient for the infinite love of God.

So, bad day? Good day? Sunshine or rain? Laughter or tears? Hired or fired? Finally got pregnant or another negative test? He loves me or he loves me not? Chicken or fish for dinner?
This, too, shall pass.
But the love of God remains, and it's in me, and it's unchanging. Will I choose to experience it?