Yesterday was a strange National Day Calendar celebration. It was National No Rhyme Nor Reason Day. Grammarians unite to recognize words that give poets fits because they don’t rhyme with anything else.
Some unrhymable (or nearly unrhymable) words in the English language include: orange, month, silver, spirit, chimney, purple, woman, ninth, pint.1 According to the English majors, these words have no natural rhyming word.
Now, if you’ve read some poets (both modern and ancient), you realize that their creativity can twist words, forcing the rhyme. And, there are some styles of poetry that lack rhyming words entirely – as well as meter, form, and other devices. The poet takes a whimsical trounce through a theme, spinning a web of words that often make sense only to those with the ability to think in the abstract.
The phrase “no rhyme nor reason” is also used to describe situations in life which make no sense. There’s no rhyme nor reason why someone would have done something like that! This shouldn’t have happened! Have you ever used that phrase in this context? You find yourself baffled and bewildered by the actions of another. If so, you are welcome to celebrate this day accordingly as well!
So many things in life don’t make sense. If you’ve lived for any amount of time, there are probably many occasions where you feel as if you are banging your head on a wall, making no difference in life, and feeling as if you keep taking one step forward and 100 backward. What can we do when there’s no rhyme nor reason for what’s happening and it’s not a celebratory event?
Ecclesiastes 3:11-14 says, “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. (12) I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. (13) And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labour, it is the gift of God. (14) I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him.” Solomon’s advice is solid.
“Don’t read the Preacher’s words as some sort of carpe diem motto that urges us to make the most of life while we can. Even when we cannot understand God’s work or ways, he wants us to enjoy life — every season of it — within the context of a holy fear.
“In his book Things of Earth, Joe Rigney urges Christians to “embrace your creatureliness. Don’t seek to be God. Instead, embrace the glorious limitations and boundaries that God has placed on you as a character in his story” (234). Rigney’s exhortation hits at the core of Ecclesiastes 3: rightly fearing God and enjoying his world. To fear God rightly is to remember our humanity. When we can’t see around the dark
corner of life yet to come, no matter how much we want to, we remember our humanity. We remember that God is God, and we are not. He controls all things at all times at all places, and he is good.
“So, we ask God for the grace to embrace the life we can see — the life he has given to us — and to enjoy it fully. Breathe deeply the cool air of a fall morning as you walk the dog. Slowly sip hot chocolate with your children. Work hard at the temp job as you await a permanent position. Let your hand linger with your ailing loved one. Even when we do not understand God’s works and ways, we can delight in his good gifts to us. We can find a unique pleasure in our toil as we throw ourselves upon our rock, Jesus Christ, through the storms of life.
”Jason DeRouchie ably summarizes the tension between finitude, infinity, frustration, and joy: “This is the goal of Ecclesiastes: that believers feeling the weight of the curse and the burden of life’s enigmas would turn their eyes toward God, resting in his purposes and delighting whenever possible in his beautiful, disfigured world” (“Shepherding Wind and One Wise Shepherd,” 15).”2
Psalms 111:2 reminds us that things do make sense when we recognize and acknowledge God’s sovereign control over all things. “The works of the LORD are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.”
1https://www.nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day/national-no-rhyme-nor-reason-day-september-1
2https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/when-life-doesnt-make-sense
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