Sermon Tone Analysis

Jokes “I don’t know” Cassette Tapes

Turn, Turn, Turn - The Byrds

Time changes everything in its turn---

Fashion

Music

In all the turns we seek to know the whole

What time is it?

How do you know?

How do you respond?

When can you appreciate it?

What constitutes success as a student/parent/grandparent/person?

Our natural reaction might be to seek reality in something beyond the reach of change, treating the world of everyday experience as a mere distraction.

Surprisingly, and superbly, Qoheleth in verse 11 enables us to see perpetual change not as something unsettling but as an unfolding pattern, scintillating and God-given.

The trouble for us is not that life refuses to keep still, but that we see only a fraction of its movement and of its subtle, intricate design.

Instead of changelessness, there is something better: a dynamic, divine purpose, with its beginning and end.

Instead of frozen perfection there is the kaleidoscopic movement of innumerable processes, each with its own character and its period of blossoming and ripening, beautiful in its time and contributing to the over-all masterpiece which is the work of one Creator.

We catch these brilliant moments, but even apart from the darkness interspersed with them they leave us unsatisfied for lack of any total meaning that we can grasp.

Unlike the animals, immersed in time, we long to see them in their full context, for we know something of eternity: enough at least to compare the fleeting with the ‘for ever’.

We are like the desperately nearsighted, inching their way along some great tapestry or fresco in the attempt to take it in.

We see enough to recognize something of its quality, but the grand design escapes us, for we can never stand back far enough to view it as its Creator does, whole and entire, from the beginning to the end

Holding on...

Becoming...

Tapestry

But from God, we can see good gifts in every turn

Simple pleasures

Did you notice the simple pleasures from yesterday?

And know God’s purpose: to complete each turn and make what’s broken whole.

God wants you to realize He’s in control not you and respect Him because of His control.

Pride and Prejudice - This too shall pass.

Avengers Endgame

God wants to set things right.

Phil

Revelation 21

My next step today is...

Notice the day to day pleasures God gives

Don’t hold on to the past; embrace the turnings God brings

Don’t live to figure everything out; embrace God’s sovereign plan

Don’t live for the future; embrace God’s opportunities to do good today

Questions:

What do you hold on to?

How do you keep and move on at the same time?

How do you let go of trying to figure everything out?

How do you embrace God’s opportunities today?