“I said in mine heart, God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time there for every purpose and for every work.” — Ecclesiastes 3:17

Time does not move aimlessly beneath the sun. Solomon has looked into “the place of judgment” (Ecclesiastes 3:16) and found wickedness sitting where righteousness should have stood. Yet he does not conclude that injustice has emptied history of meaning. He answers what he sees with what he knows: “God shall judge the righteous and the wicked” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). The court below may be corrupted, but it is not final. Above every verdict man pronounces stands the Lord, who “shall judge the world in righteousness” (Psalm 9:8). What appears unresolved within time is still moving toward the time God has appointed.

That appointed time changes the way we understand delay. We are quick to read God’s patience as absence. Because judgment does not fall when we expect it, evil begins to look secure, and the heart is tempted to believe that no reckoning will come. The psalmist knew that confusion. The prosperity of the wicked was too painful for him until he entered the sanctuary of God; “then understood I their end” (Psalm 73:17). Their present condition was not their final condition. God’s silence had not become His consent. Delay is not indifference. The Judge has not lost the case, forgotten the evidence, or surrendered His throne. “The LORD is a God of judgment: blessed are all they that wait for him” (Isaiah 30:18).

Solomon says there is a time for “every purpose and for every work” (Ecclesiastes 3:17). Nothing slips out of history before it reaches God. The public deed, the hidden motive, the secret cruelty, the unnoticed faithfulness—all move toward disclosure. “For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14). That truth gives weight to ordinary hours. Accountability does not belong only to rulers, judges, and oppressors. “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12). The days placed into our hands are gifts, but they are not weightless gifts. They are entrusted time. We are not called to live anxiously beneath the eye of a reluctant Master, but faithfully before the face of the God to whom our time already belongs.

And nowhere does the contrast between human judgment and divine judgment appear more clearly than in Jesus Christ. The only perfectly righteous Man stood in the place of judgment and found wickedness there. False witnesses rose, leaders conspired, Pilate confessed that he found no fault in Him, and still the sentence of death was pronounced. Yet Christ “committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:23). The human court condemned Him; the Father raised Him. And the One who was judged unjustly has been appointed to judge the world in righteousness. God “hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained” (Acts 17:31). Time is not merely moving toward a judgment. It is moving toward Jesus Christ.

For those who are in Christ, that truth does not undo the gospel or return the soul to condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). The Judge toward whom time is moving is the Savior who bore our judgment at the cross. Yet grace does not make our lives inconsequential. It frees us to live them honestly, gratefully, and faithfully before Him. The hidden kindness that no one remembers is seen. The quiet compromise that no one discovers is seen. The suffering righteousness that no earthly court vindicates is seen. Perhaps wisdom begins when the heart stops treating today as disposable. “See then that ye walk circumspectly… redeeming the time” (Ephesians 5:15-16). Every hour moves toward Christ. Therefore every hour may be received beneath His mercy and lived beneath His lordship.

Time is not wandering toward nothing; it is carrying every purpose and every work toward the righteous judgment of Christ.

And then there was silence.

For families: A matching children’s devotional is available. https://andthentherewassilence.net/2026/09/28/time-moving-toward-accountability-2/