“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. What do people really get for all their hard work? I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God. And I know that whatever God does is final. Nothing can be added to it or taken from it. God’s purpose is that people should fear him. What is happening now has happened before, and what will happen in the future has happened before, because God makes the same things happen over and over again.”
‭‭‬‬

Ecclesiastes‬ ‭3‬:‭1‬-‭15‬ ‭NLT

Man is not static, but God is immutable. From the perspective of a man, who seems programmed to see everything through his own lens, this can put him in conflict with God. As Solomon notes, men have eternity in their hearts but not the agency to step beyond the framing of the moment. They constantly view themselves as being fixed in the flow of time. They cannot progress any further than God would have them go. Not to the future, and not to the past. This makes God into an enemy for many. He has created chains for them in his cruelty. If he did create them, then he was a sadist for making a creature for eternal purposes who is locked to a fixed moment. Yet this mindset is a travesty. It is a lie. Solomon notes that time is not worth detaching from. Doing so would only bring about more knowledge that not only are you locked in it, but that it has a form that is equally locked. It repeats the same pattern over and over again. Indeed, this idea of causality looping is the horrific realization of many a science fiction tale. Solomon posits that this can be known by observation. Resolution comes not from breaking time and rallying against God, but from relaxing within it. We ought to derive joy from being dynamic in the staticness of time. Worrying about what we could’ve done or what we must do, when its purpose is to escape time and defy the creator, is meaningless. Time is immutable, though we are dynamic.

Human Nature and God’s Nature: Humans, being temporal, often find themselves at odds with God’s immutability.

Human Perception of Time: Humans perceive themselves as trapped in the linear flow of time, unable to transcend the present moment.

Resolution to the Conflict: Instead of trying to break free from time, one should find joy in living dynamically within its confines.