Chuck Larsen

Valentine’s Day should be about relationships in general, not just boy and girl. Whether we have a special someone or not we still must live life together. Solomon argues that we need each other for many practical reasons. There are greater results from our work when we do it together. One plus one always equals more than 2 when we work together. When we live life, walk this lonesome valley, side by side, we have others to help us when we fall into trouble or have problems. He says, “Woe to the person who falls when he is alone.” They have no one in their time of need. In Ecclesiastes 4:11-12 Solomon ads two more practical reasons why we need each other. In verse 11 he says that we provide warmth and support and comfort for each other without which we will not survive in the cold harsh world that is unconcerned about our pain and suffering. We need each other.

The Roman Emperor, Frederick the Great who ruled in the thirteenth century wanted to prove that Hebrew was the original language of man. It very well could be, but he went about it in a very crude and cruel experiment. He decided to isolate a few infants from the sound of the human voice. He reasoned that they would eventually speak the natural tongue of man. He assumed that people were born with the ability to speak. Wet nurses who were sworn to absolute silence were obtained, and though it was difficult for them, they abided by the rule. The infants never heard a word—not a sound from a human voice. Within several months they were all dead. According to Dr. Bernie Siegel, “Single men are jailed more often, earn less, have more illnesses and die at a younger age than married men. Married men with cancer live 20% longer than single men with the same cancer. Women, who often have more close friendships than men, survive longer with the same cancers. Married or not, relationships keep us alive.” We need each other for warmth and comfort.

The last reason is in verse 12. He says, “And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him – a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” We are like the Sequoia trees of California. They are incredible in size! But they have real shallow roots. You never find them standing alone. The wind rips them right out of the ground. They only survive when their roots are intertwined with one another. Nothing can uproot them when they cling to each other. The writer of the book of Hebrews tells us “forsake not the gathering of yourselves together.” I get the idea that it means more than just going to church together on Sunday. It means intertwine your roots with each other. Identify with each other. Share our lives with each other. Together we can fight off many a temptation and attack from the enemy that we might not survive on our own. Life lived to the fullest is truly a life shared with others.

We are slaves to time! I set my alarm at a certain time in the morning. I do devotions for about one hour, I exercise for another hour, I shave, shower and dress and try to start my day at a particular time every morning. I go to bed at a certain time. The older I get the earlier that gets! I schedule appointments and meetings all of which make me a slave to my watch and my calendar. The Rolling Stones sang a song entitled, “Time is on my side.” It certainly does not appear to be on my side. Tozer wrote, “We are creatures of time—time in our hands, our feet, our bodies—that causes us to grow old and to die.” Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 teaches us that there is a “time” for every purpose under heaven: “a time to be born, and a time to die.” The five most frequently repeated words in the Old Testament are “and it came to pass.” Everything under the sun is a slave to time.

C. H. Spurgeon wrote, “The more spiritual a force is the less it lies within the chains of time. The electric current, which has a greater nearness to the spiritual than the grosser forms of materialism, is inconceivably rapid from that very reason, and by it time is all but annihilated.” Whether Spurgeon understood electricity or not I like the thought of the Spirit transcending the slavery of time. You see, although we are all slaves to time and actuary time tables, “God has placed eternity in our hearts” (Ecclesiastes 3:11).

Tozer goes on to say, “One of our great woes as fallen people living in a fallen world is the constant warfare between the eternity in our hearts and the time in our bodies. This is why we can never be satisfied without God. This is why the question ‘What is God like?’ continues to spring from every one of us. God has set the values of eternity in the hearts of every person made in His image.” The emptiness of the things in this world is the emptiness of time. The fullness of the Spirit through our relationship with the God who made us in His own image is a well spring of thirst quenching water and hunger satisfying bread. Paul explains this struggle of time in our flesh and eternity in our hearts. We can break free from the chains of our temporal limitations only by focusing on the Spiritual. In 2 Corinthians 4:18-5:1, Paul writes, “For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”