When I was young, my parents would always choose what was on the radio, and that would typically mean that I listened to songs from the ’50s and ’60s. There was a song that came on one Sunday morning about the time that we pulled into the parking lot for worship called “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the Byrds. Most of the lyrics of that song come from Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. My father pointed this fact out to me, and it is one of the songs that I remember very well. It is catchy, but it also has a message that we should pay attention to. Both song and the words in Ecclesiastes share a theme that there is a time for all the things that we are to do.
Solomon wrote these things down so that we can see some of the wisdom that he had, but also as a way for us to learn what we are to do with our lives while here “under the sun.” While there are a lot of chaotic things happening today, we can look to God’s word and see what we are to do and what our response should be to the situations that we face. With a lot of the things that are happening like the peaceful protests and the riots, one of the things that we can see is there are people hurting. What are the people of God supposed to do when we see injustices? When we look at the nation of Israel in the Old Testament, one of the things that they were called out repeatedly for was the abusing and neglecting of the poor and fatherless and widowed in their land (Isaiah 1:17; Jeremiah 5:28; Amos 2:6-7). And then we can see what Jesus has to say about taking care of the people around us in Matthew 25:31-46. The people are separated, and the righteous are told that they visited Jesus when he was sick and in prison. We are to care for the people around us. This can connect with Ecclesiastes 3 very well from the standpoint of there is a time for us to build up and a time for us to tear down (Eccl. 3:3).
If there are people hurting, we must help them if we can. When it comes to our salvation, we can see that Jesus said in Matthew 25:40 that as the righteous did to the least of these, you did it to him. We should not neglect the pain that people feel.
There are some things that we should do as God’s people at a time like this. One of the first things that we should do is pray for those who are involved. We should pray for people that they stay levelheaded and that good things can come from peaceful protests. We should continue to study God’s word and seeing that all people are important in the kingdom of God. Peter learned this lesson in Acts 10:34 when he said, “In truth I perceive that God shows no partiality.” Peter understood that God does not look at where a person was born or what race they would fit in with, but commands obedience. One more thing that the people of God must do is not ignore people. If we ignore the problem, it will only get worse.
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