The Eternal Now

Scripture  

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8, 11 (NRSV)  

For everything there is a season,  

and a time for every matter under heaven:  

a time to be born, and a time to die;  

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;  

a time to kill, and a time to heal;  

a time to break down, and a time to build up;  

a time to weep, and a time to laugh;  

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;  

a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;  

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;  

a time to seek, and a time to lose;  

a time to keep, and a time to throw away;  

a time to tear, and a time to sew;  

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;  

a time to love, and a time to hate;  

a time for war, and a time for peace.  

He has made everything suitable for its time.  

Moreover, He has put a sense of eternity into their minds,  

yet they cannot find out what God has done from beginning to end.

Refrain  

I am not lost in time,  

I am held in the eternal now.

Poem  

Rainer Maria Rilke, from *Letters to a Young Poet*  

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart  

and try to love the questions themselves,  

like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  

Do not now seek the answers,  

which cannot be given you  

because you would not be able to live them.  

And the point is, to live everything.  

Live the questions now.  

Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,  

live along some distant day into the answer.

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