A Time To Every Purpose

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which 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; He hath made every thing beautiful in his time (Ecclesiastes 3:1-4;11). God doesn't do things haphazardly. There is a purpose to every experience we have. And not just a purpose, but also beauty. We may not always succeed in finding the purpose, let alone the beauty, in each of our experiences, but I think that if all seems meaningless and ugly, then it would only make sense to take the time and the effort and the faith and the hope to find that purpose and that beauty. If we don't always succeed, at least we didn't just passively let the experience happen to us with no effort on our part. And this isn't really an admonition to buck up or try to find the silver lining or just think about how it gets better. When I say that we can find purpose and beauty, I'm not suggesting that such things are in opposition to the feelings and circumstances we're in. What I'm trying to say is that if we are feeling sad, the purpose and the beauty that are to be found are in that sadness. Not that things would be more beautiful if only we were happier. There can be beauty in sadness that has nothing to do with being happy. There can be purpose in our tears that has nothing to do with "it gets better." When Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus, He wept. He wept because it was the time to mourn and because there is purpose and beauty in grieving for a great man beloved by friends and family and that ache can be meaningful and beautiful in that moment, without any kind of knowledge that they will one day see him again. When we are going through an intense experience, we have a choice to either resent and fear and bemoan our fate, or we can embrace that experience and live it as fully as we can and give no thought for the morrow but find sufficient to the day the evil thereof. Even if we can't make sense of it, even if we look and we look and we look and can find no beauty, our efforts will not go unrewarded. The more we are awake and aware, the greater will grow our powers of perception and our wisdom and eventually we will start to find purpose and beauty both in the times to laugh and the times to weep, and in the times to break down and the times to build up.