Ecclesiastes 3:1–8: There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

This was one of the three lessons we looked at in my church’s New Year’s service. In it, Solomon places our focus onto the constantly changing seasons of life. It says it in the first verse: there is a time for everything. We shouldn’t expect things in life to always be the same—that’s not the way the world works, and because of that, it’s also not the way we are called to work in the world. Change is a fact of life. My life is much different now than it was when I was 35, much different then from when I was 25, and much different then from when I was 15.

The same holds true for all of you. The same also holds true for the ministry we carry out as congregations. It’s different now than it was 10 years ago, different then from 10 years before that, and so on. As we turn our calendars to another year, we are reminded once again that change is a fact of life in our world. Things will not be the same in 2026 as they were in 2025. We will have different experiences, different blessings, different opportunities, different challenges. We’ll find ourselves in different situations that call for different actions. But no matter what the situation is, or what the challenges are, or what the change might be, this Bible reading reminds us it is all in God’s hands. We can say to God along with King David in Psalm 31, “My times are in your hands.” Our God knows the season of life we are in. Not only that, he knows where you’ve been, and he knows where you’re going. So then, our role as his people is to discern which season of life we are in for what it is and to serve him as best we can while we are in it.

If we are in a season of weeping, perhaps our role is to give God’s people an opportunity to serve and love us. If it’s a season of planting and building, then our role is to get to work and do as much as we can while we can. If it’s a season of uprooting then it is to do it the best way we can. Each season brings blessings and challenges to us as God’s people, and our task is to recognize it and continue to serve with all our heart, regardless of the season.

When speaking of the subject of change, we face a two-sided temptation. One side is to make an idol of stability. When we make an idol of stability we tend to cling too tightly to the patterns and blessings of yesterday, whatever they might be. I sometimes joke that God had 10 commandments, but in the church we often have functionally 11. Do you know the 11th Commandment? It’s “Thou shalt never change anything, ever.” When we make an idol out of stability, what happens is we make stability the goal rather than serving God in whatever season of life we might be in.

Now the other side to that temptation is to make an idol out of change and innovation. When we do this, we all too quickly want to kick to the curb anything that comes from the past and see history as something to move on from rather than something we can learn from. When we idolize change, we innovate for innovation’s sake rather than seeing innovation as a tool to serve God in our current season of life. How are you tempted in your approach to the reality of change? Are you someone who tends to idolize stability? Or do you idolize change?

Whichever direction we tend toward, we can give thanks that our Lord holds all the times and seasons of the world in his own hands, and all those times and seasons happen at his direction. He ordered all of it so that when the time had fully come, he sent his son into the world to redeem us and make us his children. God sent his son when the season was just right for him to do what he needed to do. And at just the right time, he did. Jesus died for us, for all the times we fell into sin regarding attitudes about change. By faith in him, we’re declared righteous and even called children of God, and are destined for eternal life.

The same Lord who knew just the right time to send his Son also knows just the right time for you to pass through different seasons of life, and he knows how to empower and strengthen you to serve him through them. Change is a fact of life, so let’s make it our goal to serve God in whatever season of life we are in.