There is a Season

5579 words long.

Published on 2024-04-21

Preface

This article was originally published as the chapter titled "There is a Season" in Peace, like Solomon Never Knew. It incorporates ideas from an earlier chapter in the book. That earlier chapter introduced a sociological tool called the Five Factor Model (FFM) of Personality. The five components of personality have the acronym OCEAN:

• O = Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
• C = Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
• E = Extroversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
• A = Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/judgmental)
• N = Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident)

When you see references to those personality qualities, it is an attempt to relate the Bible's Growth Pattern to modern theories of psychology.

The Poem

Seasons. Living in New England, we have four. I love the fragrance of lilacs and apple blossoms in Spring, but due to allergies Autumn is my favorite. One season gives me headaches, teary eyes and sneezes. The other – tranquil walks through red and gold. In Israel, they say they have four seasons, but mostly there is a wet season and a dry season. In Ecclesiastes 3, we come upon a poem with contrasting pairs of seasons. The pairing of verses definitely has Israel’s two-season climate in mind.

To everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, And a time to die;

A time to plant,

And a time to pluck 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 cast away stones,

And a time to gather stones;

A time to embrace,

And a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to gain, 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 of war, And a time of peace.

- Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, NKJV

Who can read these words without being captivated by their simplicity, beauty and truth? They cry out for you to immerse yourself in their meaning, find a pattern in their poetry and discover treasures of insight. Perhaps you see your current troubles in one of those pairs, stuck with the bad season and praying for the good.

Can you answer its riddle? These pairs are not haphazardly arranged. Nor are they merely diagnostic, describing reality without giving you the tools to change it. This poem contains a recipe for peace.

When I studied Job, I latched onto a few verses: “songs in the night” (Job 35) was despairing me singing myself to sleep, God treading on the waves of the sea (Job 9) was anxious me facing life’s storms, the torment of dreams (Job 7) was idolatrous me misled by the occult, Elihu’s reference to wineskins (Job 32) was joyful me bursting with the Holy Spirit, and the whirlwind (Job 38) was complacent me receiving a warning in a dream. By expanding my dim understanding outward from those verses, after two years of concerted study, I comprehended the whole book.

For Ecclesiastes, this poem of the seasons was my pivotal passage, but understanding it took longer. About six years ago, I tried to crack the mystery of Ecclesiastes. I wrote a computer program to extract the most common phrases from its text. “Under the sun” pops up in twenty-seven verses. However, it shows up twice in some paragraphs and is entirely absent from chapters 7, 11 and 12. It does not seem to serve as a reliable divider for interpretative units. Having learned about chiasms (inverted parallelisms that pop up in many Bible books, including Job), I searched for one in Ecclesiastes. I identified key themes to see if they were organized in such a pattern, and saw none.

If you read what commentators say about the structure of Ecclesiastes, you will find opinions like this, from the New Century Bible Commentary:

"in general no progression of thought

from one section to another is discernible."

– R. N. Whybray (1989)

Does the Teacher talk in circles? Does the futility he attributes to humanity’s search for purpose apply equally to his book’s structure? Is it like the syncopated cacophony of the pile-driver outside my college dorm window, tormenting my mind as I searched futilely for a pattern so I could tune it out?

The poem of the seasons screams, “I am the key to the book!” It names twenty-eight seasons of life. Would it be too much for those twenty-eight ideas to be covered, one after another, in logical progression, like a table of contents? Sadly, while most of those “seasons” are commented on elsewhere in the book, some are not. Matching some seasons to related passages creates questionable correlations.

The word “time” or “times” occurs forty-six times in Ecclesiastes. Between words like “time”, “season”, “sun”, “moon”, “eternity”, and references to natural cycles, it is blatantly obvious that besides futility, the second theme is time: how you plan it, spend it, endure or enjoy it, waste it, and are granted a limited portion of it.

The word “after” is an important marker, although things get muddied depending on your Bible translation. Ecclesiastes makes a clear distinction between two types of futility: the vanity of our efforts today and the impossibility of seeing the outcome of our efforts tomorrow. Sadly, my favorite translation, the NIV, is the muddiest. It uses the phrase “chasing after the wind” for the futility of what we do today, thus causing the word “after” to occur in passages relating to both senses of futility. To make things worse, it also uses “afterward”, “future”, and “follow” in place of “after”, making it tricky to use a concordance to find the verses that relate to the concept.

Comparing translations, the futility of today’s activities is rendered as “vexation of spirit” (KJV), “striving after wind” (ASV), “striving after the wind” (ESV), “grasping for the wind” (NKJV), “chasing after the wind” (NIV), and “a pursuit of the wind” (HCSB). In each translation, this futility of today is found nine times, in 1:14, 1:17, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26, 4:4, 4:6, 4:16, and 6:9.

The futility of tomorrow is more varied. Four times is “after” used to speak of how one cannot see one’s own future (3:22, 6:12, 7:14, and 10:14). Once it refers to the impossibility of people from the future seeing back to us (forgetfulness, in 1:11). Once it speaks of not knowing how your successor (read children) will do (2:18). Once it speaks of what you can see in the future: your own death (9:3). The final occurrence of “after” is in the last chapter:

Remember also your Creator in the days of your youth,

before the evil days come and the years draw near

of which you will say, “I have no pleasure in them”;

before the sun and the light and the moon and

the stars are darkened and the clouds return after the rain...

- Ecclesiastes 12:1-2, ESV

There is argument over the interpretation. It may refer to eyes cloudy with cataracts or the rapid succession of troubles in our later years, causing tears. Our faculties fail us and all possibility of planning the future departs.

Were you counting? That is nine words about the futility of today and nine about the futility of tomorrow. These matching numbers, repeated phrases and ideas torment the reader with their insinuation of pattern, yet the meaning remains hidden.

While studying Job, I was tempted to give up, read other people’s commentaries and be done with it. Ditto here. I do read commentaries. Years before researching Job, I read one about that book. However, despite many useful observations made by that author (whose other works I also read and accepted), I concluded he was wrong on a vital point that shaped my entire understanding of Job.

My first months studying Job had to do with unlearning the wrong ideas I had previously absorbed. Commentators argue over every word. It is not good enough to accept what sounds like the best argument for every verse. If you assemble those pieces, you find inconsistencies: the puzzle won’t fit together. The best coherent picture of the overall book requires picking and choosing some views that are in the minority. Only after I had arrived at a coherent structure of Job could I go back and search for others who agreed, to see if my ideas were novel (hence suspect) or had good support. This process is what gave me confidence: if other people, with different educational and doctrinal backgrounds, following a different process, came to the same conclusions as I, then I knew I was on the right track. When on top of that I felt in my spirit that it was true, such confirmation encouraged me to press on.

I followed this course with Ecclesiastes. I am glad that I came to my conclusions before being swayed by other’s opinions, because I could get sucked down a rabbit hole. Take this poem in chapter three. The verses describe twenty-eight times. What do people make of that number?

The astrologers of ancient Babylon, Greece and China, the Hindu mystics of India, and the Arab mathematicians divided the heavens into twenty-eight lunar mansions. Instead of the familiar twelve zodiac constellations, they divided the most prominent stars into twenty-eight groups. Followers of mystical Jewish Kabbalah do likewise.

To the Hindus, the moon god had twenty-seven wives, one in each mansion, called a Nakshatra. Tucked among the wives, in the twenty-second mansion sat Abhijit, whose Nakshatra includes the star Vega from the constellation Lyra. Abhijit – unlike the other twenty-seven – was male, “the one who cannot be defeated”. Maybe not – to simplify the math, some Hindu traditions reduced the number of Nakshatras to twenty-seven and kicked poor Abhijit out of his mansion. (The moon god was probably jealous at only having twenty-seven wives. Look at Solomon. He had 700!)

Why did ancient peoples use these numbers, whether 27 or 28? The sidereal lunar month is 27.32 days. A sidereal month measures how long it takes for the moon to make one circuit about the earth relative to the fixed stars. Since the earth is moving around the sun at the same time, the moon is always playing catch-up. That is why the lunar phases last about 29.5 days, called a synodic month.

Search the web. You’ll find the most fanciful astrological interpretations of this passage. We will steer clear of such debatable insights. One thing is solid: Solomon was making an intentional reference to the lunar cycle and Israel’s lunar calendar. One “time” is given for each day of the month. This implies a cyclical pattern to life, since the moon continues endlessly on its course, as well as asserting that the list is complete, since all days are covered.

The book’s second most common time reference is to life “under the sun”. The sun governs two cycles: the daily cycle and the yearly cycle. That phrase occurs in twenty- seven verses. If it equaled the number of “times” in the poem, that would be a dead giveaway they were related. If very different, you wouldn’t give it any thought. Instead, the numbers differ by one, and twenty-seven is used by some ancient cultures instead of twenty-eight for the number of lunar mansions. It makes you want to pull out your hair. Perhaps if we compared the context surrounding each occurrence of “under the sun” with those twenty- eight “times”? You can look. I did. No correspondence.

My failure was due to a simple error. The search feature in my iPad Bible app lists all verses that contain the search phrase. I counted the verses with the phrase “under the sun” and saw twenty-seven. Only as I was writing the final chapters of this book and studying each verse in detail did I spot my mistake. Ecclesiastes 9:9 uses the phrase “under the sun” twice! Thus there are twenty-eight occurrences of “under the sun”. The double usage in verse 9:9 marks that verse as special, but what that means must wait until later.

Inconsistencies abound. In some pairs, the desirable “time” comes first, in others, last. Another suggestive detail is that some consecutive pairs are related. Born & die vs plant & pluck, or weep & laugh vs mourn & dance. Others, not so much, like tear & sew vs silence & speak.

While struggling to outline this book, a fellow writer suggested mind mapping to gain insight. It worked. Then I thought, why not see if I can find a pattern in the organization of the twenty-eight times? That worked, too.

I take things literally. Keeps me from recognizing metaphorical meanings. Given the partial agreement between groups of four “times”, I clustered them that way and asked, “If seemingly unlike items belong together, how must I alter their meanings so that the groupings make sense?” I hoped to find metaphorical meanings that would not do injury to the Scriptures. I also needed a test to prove I had not concocted a fanciful, allegorical meaning of the kind once fashionable in the church but now ridiculed. That test was that from the seven groupings of four “times” I could synthesize a single, overarching message. The groupings needed to tell a story, and that story had to agree with the rest of the book. They do – and it does.

Behold the Seven Pieces of Peace (aka Growth Pattern):

The story that the poem in Ecclesiastes 3 tells is simple:

You must attend wisely

to seven areas of life

if you are to enjoy peace.

On the “mind map” illustration, the first pair of times, for birth and death, occur at about 3 o’clock. The progression is clockwise (of course), but along the left side of the diagram, the progression for each group of four times is from top to bottom. The cycle ends again near 3 o’clock, for war and peace.

Existence (Security)

The first group is birth and death, planting and plucking up. Initially, it looks like animal life and vegetable life. This could mean herding cattle and raising crops, the essential components of an agricultural society.

However, as parables, they refer to human life. Human birth and death is the first pair. Here is the first revelation: death is not the last “time” in the entire list. The message is optimistic. Peace is the last “time”. The journey can have a happy ending.

If plant and pluck refer to people, what can they mean? Planting is building a home and putting down roots.

They will be like a tree planted by the water

that sends out its roots by the stream.

It does not fear when heat comes;

its leaves are always green.

It has no worries in a year of drought

and never fails to bear fruit.”

- Jeremiah 17:8, NIV

To Jeremiah, a planted person is one positioned where all the raw materials they need for success are handy.

Plucking up has to do with moving, either by choice or necessity. In a negative sense, the Psalmist says:

Surely God will bring you down to everlasting ruin:

He will snatch you up and pluck you from your tent;

he will uproot you from the land of the living.

- Psalm 52:5, NIV

This pair is about shelter and protection, or its loss. This phase of life is about obtaining security.

As children, we need our parents to give birth to us and provide us with life. We need protection from the elements: a house, a tent, a cave – something. Our need for food then takes in the agricultural aspects of the parable.

Combined, we need the basics of food, shelter, and health in order to survive and grow. As a baby, this is most of what we need, but throughout life, we never stop needing these things.

Function (Ability)

The second set of four is kill, heal, break down, and build up. Killing and healing have to do with the body. A suitable interpretation of the other two is the formation of the intellect. Breaking down is removing false ideas, while building up is teaching a child the right way to think and act.

After infancy, a child grows in height but also in knowledge and physical ability. For a peaceful life, we need an educated, sound mind (the realm of cognition we previously discussed) and a healthy body trained to do useful things. This phase of life is about growing in ability.

Emotions (Stability)

When a person reaches their teen years, their biggest challenge is learning emotional self control. This third set of four seasons is weep, laugh, mourn and dance. The first two comprise verbal self control. The second pair is physical self control, governing actions and impulses. This is the area where the Big Five factor of neuroticism comes into play. By definition, it is impossible to be at peace when powerful emotions are raging through your heart. However, Solomon cautioned that mourning should not be avoided or suppressed, or its opposite, joy, will be banished as well. This phase of life is about acquiring stability.

Relationships (Amity)

This fourth category name was puzzling to arrive at. What do casting away stones and gathering stones have to do with embracing and refraining from embracing?

Interpreters are divided over the stones. Farmers gather stones from a field to prepare it for plowing. Perhaps invading soldiers toss the stones back in to harass the populace by disrupting their planting? Or are stones gathered to construct a building, and scattered to destroy it?

If they are to relate to embracing, those activities must have the connotation of collaborating together in a venture versus moving apart in opposition.

In marriage, if a husband and a wife are to enjoy a fruitful life together, they need to come together in two ways: in the chores of life, work shouldered together, and in physical and emotional intimacy, thus the embracing.

The period in life where people generally begin to wrestle with these challenges follows the teen years. Throwing away stones then would mean dissolving a relationship that didn’t work out.

Collaboration falls under the aegis of the factor of conscientiousness, while intimacy is related to openness, and both are tempered by agreeableness.

Yet we must not settle for an outcome built solely upon the best foundation we can erect:

Though one may be overpowered,

two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

- Ecclesiastes 4:12, NIV

We need that third strand. This phase of life is about learning to display amity.

(If different times in history can be characterized by these twenty-eight seasons, ours is “a time to refrain from embracing”, e.g. social distancing due to the pandemic.)

Resources (Opportunity)

The fifth of the seven pieces is a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. If both pairs are assumed to relate to possessions, they are redundant. It makes sense to conclude that the first concerns opportunities, our “immaterial” possessions, while the second addresses material possessions.

Extroversion and Openness enter the picture with opportunities, as an extrovert must engage with people to find and develop those business ventures, but only an open person is attuned to new ideas. Conscientiousness is needed to succeed once the opportunity is realized, and agreeableness prevents partners from being alienated.

A lost opportunity is not necessarily a bad thing. Discretion and opportunity cost force a person to analyze, strategize and prioritize. Some options must be rejected. Cognition factors in heavily.

On the material side, introverts might make better conservators of wealth and less agreeable people willing to say no may avoid risks, like being conned.

A feast is made for laughter,

wine makes life merry,

and money is the answer for everything.

- Ecclesiastes 10:19, NIV

This phase of human development spans most of our working life, but in our days especially the fourth decade of life. A person can fail anywhere along the way, but here is where the failure is most visible and where the separation of successful and unsuccessful accelerates. Money may not solve all our problems, but how we handle it is the answer we give to the world about what kind of person we are. If early cracks open in our marriage, if we never overcame the emotional turmoil of our teen years, now the reckoning arrives.

This phase of life is about being wise in identifying, pursuing or rejecting opportunity.

Communication (Community)

To acquire the sixth piece of peace, we face four critical seasons: a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak. (3:7, NIV) The trials revolve around trust and openness.

Tearing is the weakening and breaking of friendships, marriages, partnerships, and even church fellowships. Mending is forgiveness, repentance, and renegotiation.

Whoever would foster love

covers over an offense,

but whoever repeats the matter

separates close friends.

- Proverbs 17:9, NIV

Above all, love each other deeply,

because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8, NIV

My wife and I fell into disagreement with our church years ago. We left it for seven years. By the grace of God, a way opened up for us to be mutually reconciled. We returned sixteen years ago. That church has been a tower of strength in my life. Mending is critical.

Similarly, I had a falling out with my father once and refused to talk to him for three years. At my wife’s urging, I eventually forgave him unilaterally. Years later, he softened and apologized for many things. Moreover, he developed a genuine kindness and politeness, a significant change in personality. The last ten years or so, I have been closer to him than at any time since my early childhood.

Times of tearing come to us all. They are tests. We can rebuild something stronger than it was before, or refuse to change and drift through life without strong attachments.

Battles over trust open us up or close us off. Silence can be good, as listening – or bad, with severed lines of communication. Likewise, speaking can be measured and patient, or accusatory and inflammatory.

Openness and Agreeableness can be assets here. The self control of one low on trait Neuroticism can prevent crises from escalating. One habit goes the furthest: listening to God. The silence of prayer is ALWAYS in season:

Guard your steps when you go

to the house of God.

Go near to listen rather than

to offer the sacrifice of fools,

who do not know that they do wrong.

- Ecclesiastes 5:1, NIV

How do we listen? We engage in the thirteen means of communicating with God listed in the section on the paradox of love: observing nature, listening to our elders, praying, fasting, pondering our dreams and visions (with care), learning from suffering, listening to prophets (with discernment), marveling at God’s miracles, accepting the ministrations of angels, hearing directly through a theophany, observing the sabbath, offering sacrifices, and reading the Word of God. These means have been available since antiquity and Job availed himself of all of them. I know of no other means beyond these, but I can’t be certain there aren’t any. If you find one, search the Bible carefully before you trust it. People have tried many other ways to contact God and He has not been silent in His condemnation of those attempts.

This phase of life is all about forming and maintaining community.

Loyalty

Of the seven pieces of peace, this category offers the most trouble. As the final piece, it should have a grand and indisputable title. Love and hate, war and peace... Peace is the goal of Ecclesiastes. As it is both listed as one of the seasons and encompasses the whole, it is not a suitable name for one part. Love is the theme of Job, Jesus’ great commandment, and Paul’s highest virtue, but it, too, is a listed season. How to you combine love and peace into a single, overarching category? You don’t. They are joined by their opposites.

What is love? It is the mobilizing of every resource and mental and emotional faculty in the service of the beloved. Love invites, opens, and accepts. It says, “I stand for you; I stand with you; Where you go, I will go; I choose you.”

What is hate? It is barring gates, raising walls, and opposing every word or overture. It says, “I stand against you; I will leave you; I reject you.”

Together, love and hate are about attitude, disposition, and decision. Words and actions may flow from them, but love and hate are the wellspring.

With love, you know a swift approach and a warm embrace are on their way before you see a muscle move. The times of love and hate are about choosing sides. Then comes war.

War is action. You already declared your allegiance, and the battle lines have already been drawn, now you prove your allegiance on the field of battle. Your attitude is made

manifest by your demonstration of loyalty and courage. After the war ends, the winner enjoys the peace that follows.

Attitude + Demonstration = Loyalty

This was Solomon’s stumbling block. He wavered in his loyalty to Yahweh, drawn into his wives’ idolatry.

I am in the middle of writing another book, one I set aside so I could tackle this one. The working title is The Loyalty of Trolls. Near the beginning of that project, I struggled to find a suitable theme. Then a family squabble intruded and I was forced to make a decision that runs against my grain. I had to take sides in an argument. I had to demonstrate my loyalty.

Loyalty has not played a big role in my thinking about life. Ideas, truths, and doctrines I will research and dissect and reject or defend. However, in keeping with my Asperger’s, my attachments to people are weaker and based upon strange reasons. A few years ago it dawned on me why I choose the subjects I write about. I write about my weaknesses.

• Convictions & Priorities.
• Empathy & Kindness.
• Loyalty & Knowing the right Time.

I explore them first in fiction and then in fact. Based on this, I am certain that Loyalty is the final piece to the puzzle of peace.

These seven pieces have one part that is mental, emotional or verbal, and a second part that requires action. This applies even to “a time to be born, and a time to die”. Physical birth and death might not have the mental component, but there is our spiritual birth and death, being “born again” and dying to self as we are “crucified in Christ”.

A skeptic will mock, “I learned all that in my first semester of developmental psychology. I expect more from the so-called wisest man in all the world.” Is Solomon’s genius merely poetic, masking commonplace maxims in complex metaphors? Will effort expended to decode it pay off?

Solomon summarized the process of the physical, mental and spiritual development of a person from birth to death with razor sharp accuracy in eight verses. Then he spent the rest of his book elaborating on challenges that threaten this process, and the source of their solution:

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

- Ecclesiastes 3:9-14, NIV

Psychologists labor mightily to find remedies for maladies afflicting children, teens, young adults, parents, and senior citizens. What do they know about the eternity in our hearts? What substitute can they offer for the eighth piece, the hole in the middle of our soul? Every minute, every mile, we need God. If Solomon can summarize life in eight verses, can we not summarize what we need from God in ten words?

When the Cold War ended, people were excited that we could divert resources once spent on weapons towards peaceful ends. They called it the “peace dividend”. I look forward to the day when our warfare is concluded. Until then, here is how Jesus serves us in the seven areas of life:

Tree of life,

Healer,

Comforter,

Friend;

Giver,

Confidant,

Peace dividend.

To scholars who cannot see a logical progression in the argument put forth in Ecclesiastes, let us offer this first sign that one exists. In eight verses, from birth to death, we have the course of life through all its seasons. Sort of…

More Seasons!

For reasons that will become clear later, Ecclesiastes 3 does not cover all the seasons of life, merely those leading up to maturity. Ecclesiastes is structured to describe two trajectories for life that parallel two trajectories of history. The first trajectory is that of the believing soul and the church, whose path ends in peace when Christ returns.

That is the pattern found in the poem. The second trajectory is that of the body, the unbelieving soul, and the world, which peak and then decline toward destruction, at the final judgment. That pattern extends beyond the poem and occupies the final chapters of Solomon’s book.

In keeping with the “-ty” endings of the previous seven phases, here is the complete list of seasons of life as revealed by Solomon:

• Security
• Ability
• Stability
• Amity
• Opportunity
• Community
• Loyalty
• Maturity
• Frailty
• Senility
• Mortality
• Eternity

Many unfortunates have their lives cut short and reach mortality ahead of schedule. Some are blessed, like Moses who exited life in full vigor of mind and body. The rest of us will pass through years of decline before our clock strikes midnight and we are collected by the angels in our final harvest. Before the end, the whole world will enter a period of irreversible decline. Will we wed ourselves to its dark fate, or to the church whose light will shine like the arriving dawn?

Don’t Be Passive!

At first blush, the list of times projects an idea of passively reacting to the unpredictable events of life. The Teacher did voice such ideas when he said “time and chance happen to them all” in verse 9:11 or

“When times are good, be happy;

but when times are bad, consider this:

God has made the one

as well as the other.

Therefore, no one can discover

anything about their future.”

- Ecclesiastes 7:14

Praise God! Now we see there is a divine purpose to the stages of life, a calendar exhibiting His care. These twenty- eight seasons are not entirely unpredictable as they sweep over us. We can prepare, we can assess our obstacles and take action. God has given us wisdom that we may thrive. Will that wisdom let us down? Solomon answered that question elsewhere when he spoke of wisdom:

Long life is in her right hand;

in her left hand are riches and honor.

Her ways are pleasant ways,

and all her paths are peace.

- Proverbs 3:16-17, NIV

What about the remaining chapters? Could it be that students of this book cannot see the larger pattern because, having set their sights too low, their eyes are out of focus? Do you use a microscope to study the stars? Will a stopwatch measure eternity?

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Links to the other articles in this section:

Spiritual Growth Introduction to the articles about spiritual growth.

What are Life's Twelve Most Important Questions? If you can answer these questions, you know the way better than the Mandelorian.

What are the Heavenly Treasures? It is one thing to list these treasures, quite another to acquire them!

The Harvest Pattern of Jesus A tactical pattern for overcoming an individual obstacle and reaping a single spiritual harvest.

The Growth Pattern of Solomon Overview of a strategic pattern to help you plan your whole life.

• There is a Season The chapter from Peace, like Solomon Never Knew where I first introduced the Growth Pattern.

• The Apostle Paul's Discipleship Program Shows how the first seven letters of Paul to the churches are arranged according to the Growth Pattern.

• Seven Facets of Spirit-led Discipleship The Sermon on the Mount conforms to the Growth Pattern.

The Motherhood Pattern A strategic pattern for women.

The Law Pattern of Moses The law does more than restrict; it also guides.

The Journey Pattern It is a long journey back to Eden.

Emotional Prophecies of the Psalms

Job and the Ways to Talk to God

Job Description for a Savior Job knew what he needed in a savior. Do you?

Dreams Dreams can guide you, paralyze you, or lead you astray. In my case, it was all three.

Spiritual Warfare Somebody IS out to get you.