Riddles in the Dark
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
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QOHELET
Teacher, Preacher, literally ‘one who gathers’

HEVEL
- lit. smoke, vapor, mist (used 38x)
- fig. vanity, meaningless, futile, enigma, absurd
- that which cannot be grasped or contained, fleeting

WHAT IS TIME?

“What is time then? If nobody asks me, I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I do not know.”
– St. Augustine

TIME (zeman / chronos) – appointed, definite, or fixed duration; chronological sequence of events

SEASON or OCCASION (‘et / kairos) – qualitative occasion, season, or the right moment for an event to happen; opportune moment

All physical creation is bound by time
- Where there is matter, there is time (Spacetime)

God is not bound by time. Time and space are bound by God.

“Given enough time, time will take back all it gives. Given enough line, time will reel back all it cast your way. Every blessing time brings will eventually make way for a burden. Time runs in only one direction, but it gives and takes equally. All its gifts are loans…Every action will sometime meet its equal and opposite. Once time finishes you, your final balance will perfectly match the zero you started with.”
– Bobby Jamieson, Everything Is Never Enough

There is a time and place for everything
...except justice.

OBSERVATION: Places of justice can become corrupted.
BELIEF: God seeks justice and will judge the righteous and the wicked in his own time.

OBSERVATION: There is not much separating humans from animals – we all die just the same.
BELIEF: Hopefully a better eternal fate awaits God’s children.
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Carpe Diem

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
– JRR Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring