Quarantine and God’s Will for your Life

by Joel Miles

“My life is not what it should be.” That was the thought that kept going through my mind. It was about three years ago, and I was struggling to embrace the situation I was in. The reason was that I had this growing sense that my life had been decided by a series of random events, rather than the guiding orchestration of God. I had lived in Chicago since 2005 and loved it, but I had begun to question why I was here. I always thought I would move back to Canada, closer to my family. This was simply never part of the plan. My wife and I were also struggling with infertility. We had had our first child by surprise, but with our second God was holding back. 

“My life is not what it should be.” 

Perhaps this is how you feel right now. 

In the midst of my discontent, we were studying Ecclesiastes with the interns at our church. We would take a single passage each time we got together and spend about an hour intensely trying to unpack it. I enjoyed these times, but I was not prepared to be so deeply impacted in our session on Ecclesiastes 3:1–15. The text reads:

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up 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 together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast 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 for war, and a time for peace.

What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man.

I perceived that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already has been; and God seeks what has been driven away.

I never understood this passage before we studied it, but it hit me like lightning that day. The point of the poem is to take all of the experiences we could have in life—all of the ups and the downs, the good and the bad, the joyful and the despairing—and place them under the sovereign hand of our good God. The point is to call on us to embrace whatever season we are in with joy and intentional living before the Lord, because no matter what you are going through, it is God that has called you to that season. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about this again as I am facing some of the same frustrations and dissatisfaction with our current circumstances. My wife and I had intentionally ordered our lives so as to avoid the things we are now being forced to do. We never felt called to homeschooling, especially while we are both working full-time! Even though we were committed to being heavily involved in the kids’ education, we believed the Lord had given us the school to greatly assist us while we used our gifts elsewhere. Along with parenting, the Lord called me to pastor and my wife to nurse. Those things are very hard to balance right now. We simply have never felt called to live this way, and so we have been having a very difficult time embracing the challenges it has created. 

I assume you might feel similarly. Perhaps not concerning homeschooling and work, but related to some other aspect of the situation we are currently in. You likely didn’t feel called to avoid contact with your friends and family. You likely did not sign a lease on your apartment, thinking God would have you spend almost all of your time confined there. Most of you did not take your job thinking you would work remotely, or if you are in the healthcare field that you were committing to this level of possible exposure to harm. This is not what you planned and not what you ever felt God leading you to do. Life has simply taken a different shape than you would have ever thought God would want it to have. And so perhaps like me, it has been hard to embrace. But we need to because no matter how we feel, Ecclesiastes shows us that this moment is what God has called us to. 

Many of the conversations I have had over the years with friends, family, and congregants deal with the search for God’s will. We struggle, pray, and plead with God to reveal what he wants us to do. I cannot count the number of times I have spoken with someone who feels paralyzed with how to act because they are waiting on God to “make it clear.” Should they move, take a specific job, marry a specific person, pursue a specific career? “God, please make it clear!"

God, however, rarely does that. Rarely does he “make something clear” in the way we desire. I realize that there are many stories in the Scriptures of God revealing his specific will to someone, but those stories are not the usual way God acts. The reason they are included in the Scriptures is because they are rare! God rarely explicitly reveals to us what he wants us to do. And that’s intentional. It forces us to trust him! Which is far better than knowing exactly what we should do! Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” What that means is that while God will graciously make everything right and beautiful, he has hidden from us how he will do this. We have a sense of this reality, since we have eternity in our hearts, but he has blinded us from grasping what he is doing from the beginning to end. We rarely know what God wants us to do. We simply don’t have the privilege of knowing what God is up to; we only know that it is good. 

Nevertheless, clarity concerning God’s will for our lives is something we constantly desire. We long to know for sure that what we are doing is God’s will. If that is the case, at this moment, in all of our lives, we have our wish in spades.

We are in a situation that God has clearly called us to. It has never been so clear that I am to stay home, distance myself from others, and facilitate my children’s education. I can reason as much as I want that this is not what I should be doing. I can say that I am not built to be a homeschooling parent, or that I am not someone who should be isolated from people, especially the congregants I am trying to shepherd. But right now, that is exactly what God wants me to do. God has placed me in this situation, and he has placed you in yours. He has made it so clear that the governor of the state, the mayor of the city, the surgeon general of the United States, and all of your friends are telling you to shelter-at-home. We are called to this.

That does not mean it will be easy. God never promised us that! Our Lord and Savior was crushed on the cross according to the will of God the father! What it does mean is that we should seek to embrace the circumstances we are facing and lean into them, rather than just try to escape them or complain until it ends.

I am speaking to myself when I write these things. I am tired and mad. I am frustrated and anxious. I don’t want to live this way anymore. I miss my friends. I miss my morning routine. I miss the office. I miss the life I thought God wanted me to live. But I need to realize that that life was given to me for a season and that season (at least for now) has come to an end. God has brought us into another season, and we each need to embrace it.

I want to return to Ecclesiastes 3:11 to understand it a bit more. While I have argued that this situation is unique, in that God has clearly shown us that this is what we are supposed to be doing for the foreseeable future, the purpose of this time remains elusive. We still can’t see what God is doing from the beginning to the end. But the confusion is meant to drive us to trust God, not grumble before him. This does not mean that we can’t lament and cry out to the Lord. We can. But like the psalmists, we must do so trusting that God will make everything beautiful in his time. There is a purpose to what God is doing right now. I don’t know what it is, but I need to trust that he is graciously acting during this difficult season. I need to embrace the situation he has placed me in, rather than constantly living as if it should be different. There is a time even for this. 

We can spend so much of our lives wishing it was different. We can live always wishing we were in a different season. We can live our lives thinking that true life is somewhere out there, in a different context, at a different time, waiting to be discovered. We can live as if it is possible to miss what God calls us to do, and so miss our lives. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that life is right now. It is here. Whatever situation you are in is the season God has placed you in. Embrace it. You can be confident this is his will for you right now. And though it may be difficult, in time God will make it beautiful.

Three years ago, I thought living in Canada with more than one child would be best for me and more in line with God’s “will” for my life. I had to learn to embrace the season God had placed me in. I needed to stop wasting my life thinking it was supposed to be different. I need to do the same today. Perhaps you do as well.

Joel Miles is an Associate Pastor of Holy Trinity Church, where he has served for 6 years. He lives on the West Side of Chicago with his wife, Anna, and four children.