Break the ice. What is your favorite time of year, and why?

Read Ecclesiastes 3:11-13.

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11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy the good life. 13 It is also the gift of God whenever anyone eats, drinks, and enjoys all his efforts..

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Discuss the text. Life is hevel. It is vapor and fog. Sometimes life is easy, and sometimes life is difficult. Life is hevel, and because that is true, the wise way to approach life is as a gift. Life is a gift to receive, but that’s not the way many of us approach life. One way we approach life is as a problem to solve. If life is a problem to solve, then we wring our hands in the hevel, and we try to use God to help fix our problems in life. The primary response of life as a problem to solve is fear.

Another way we approach life is as a competition to win. If life is a competition to win, then we try to navigate the hevel with wandering eyes, how’s everyone else doing? Am I farther along than everyone else? The way we approach God is we try to appease him. Because we know we are not winning, the primary response of life as a competition is shame.

The only way to navigate life in a way that brings lasting joy is to receive life as a gift. To wander through the hevel with open hands. To be present to the beauty in life right now. To remember God has made everything beautiful in its time. To trust God with the outcomes.

1. How do you typically wander through the hevel? As a problem to solve or as a competition to win?
2. What do you think it means that God has set eternity in our hearts? What does this say about how he created us?
3. What is the connection between trusting God and having lasting joy?
4. What time in your life can you look back on and see that God made everything beautiful in its time?
5. What truths about God’s character can our group remind you of that will help you through a potentially fearful (problem to fix) or shameful (competition to win) situation?

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Rest in God’s promises. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Matthew 6:26-27

Read the following, slowly aloud, as a closing prayer. Life is hevel. It is vapor and fog. Sometimes life is easy, and sometimes life is difficult. Be pleased, O LORD, to provide. Be pleased, O LORD, to teach. Be pleased, O LORD, to correct. Be pleased, O LORD, to forgive. Be pleased, O LORD, to repair. Be pleased, O LORD, to discipline. Be pleased, O LORD, to lead. Be pleased, O LORD, by our faith. Amen.