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; 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 get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, 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 of war, and a time of peace." (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Our purpose in life, in part, is to experience the richness and fullness of all that our mortal experience has to offer. Many of life's opportunities are sweet and pleasurable, just like many are bitter and painful, and still others tedious and seemingly uneventful. But no event, no season, no lapse of time is wasted without purpose. That is to say, God has accounted for every second of our lives and we have the opportunity and the privilege and the responsibility to embrace every moment with the eye toward taking full advantage and learning and growing from whatever God has set in front of us. If we truly prayed to know God's will for us in any given circumstance, then we would be granted the serenity and the confidence to plant when it is time to plant and harvest when it is time to harvest and rejoice when it is time to rejoice when it is time to rejoice. If we could only let God and His plan prevail and trust that if He has prepared a time for us to lose, then we can lose with dignity and patience and long-suffering; and if He has prepared a time for us to break down, then we can break down without guilt or anxiety but with hope that the time to build back up will come; and if He has prepared a time for us to build back up, then we can with courage and determination forsake the familiarity of our misery and embrace the growing pains and the good hurts of changing for the better. We can get it into our heads that the thing we want more than anything is to plant seeds to grow. It's what our neighbor or our sister or our cousin is doing and if it's good enough for them then it's good enough for us. And we can go out in the dead of winter and curse that the soil is hard as stone and that the snow keeps smothering our little plants, and on and on. Or we can recognize that it is not yet time to plant, and much as we kick against the pricks, there is no hurrying the winter along and any efforts to plant are going to be fruitless and frustrating. Our ways are set and our days can not be numbered less. Each and every season of life is a gift, a talent entrusted to us by our Lord for us to grow and develop and multiply twofold. And we can sit there and say the Lord is a hard man and thrust our talent under a napkin and wait around for the time that we really want, or we can prove our worth and our fidelity by being faithful in a few things and the Lord will bless us in return with many things. When God gives us bread, let us not be ungrateful and thrust it aside because we had our heart set on a stone. Let us embrace each season and laugh when it is time to laugh and plant when it is time to plant and weep when it is time to weep and lose when it is time to lose and heal when it is time to heal.