Ecclesiastes 3

A Time for Everything

3 For everything there is a season,
    a time for every activity under heaven.
2 A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal.
    A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to cry and a time to laugh.
    A time to grieve and a time to dance.
5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.
    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.
6 A time to search and a time to quit searching.
    A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear and a time to mend.
    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate.
    A time for war and a time for peace.

9 What do people really get for all their hard work? 10 I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. 11 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. 12 So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can. 13 And people should eat and drink and enjoy the fruits of their labor, for these are gifts from God.

14 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. 15 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.

Verse 15 stood out to me today.  The things I'm facing and the uncertainty of today and tomorrow have happened before.  People in my life have been there, done that.  This is why we need our community around us.  This is why you surround yourself with a diverse circle of people in your life.  SOMEONE has been in your shoes before. 

A time to be quiet and a time to speak.  Before we can shout and share what God is doing from a rooftop, we need to deal with it in the closet.  To wrestle and work through the issues God has me working on in the moment.  Too often, we speak before we're ready.  Trying to work on this in my life.  What God does in my heart, needs to go deep - not wide.  Wide will come in time, but deep is what matters most in our faith. It's what grounds us.  Harvesting before you are ready leads to disease, low yields, weeds. It messes with the cycle of the plant.

A time to plant and a time to harvest.  I need some planting at this point in my life. I'm hungry and thirsty.  Craving more of Him.  It's okay to admit.  It's okay to need fertilized, so long as I come back around to harvest it.  

When reading this - it says to me "balance".  You can't need planting every year and never harvest it. You can't just have death and no life. You can't spend your whole life searching.  

Balance is hard.  It means giving up the old to go for the new.  It means disappointing some in your life to seek out the new potential relationships in life. Obeying comes with a price, but in the end an even greater reward.  It never says it will be easy.