A Season For Everything

There is a time for everything,    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

These familiar verses remind each of us that we don’t “do” everything all at the same time. We do this now and another thing a bit later. We feel a certain way now, and a different way later. Things change. Even grief. You will not be finished grieving for years, but it doesn’t feel the same day to day, week after week. It changes. It might go back to an earlier stage for a while then to a new and different way of impacting you.

As I look at the list and think about grief, most of the “times” can be part of grief: tearing down, building, embracing and Not embracing, searching, keeping vs throwing away, silence and speaking. Even war and peace can be part of it.  You might be at war or harbor bad feelings toward someone involved in the accident or medical circumstances, or with someone in your family, or with God. Let me encourage you to find peace with them, with yourself, and with God. Certainly that is God’s goal for us all – Peace with God. Getting there is a journey too, but He promises to walk with you, to not abandon you, to strengthen you for the process, to love you and keep on loving you. His grace abounds

How many of these things have been on the path of your grief journey? Let me know! What’s been most difficult? Most comforting?

The writer concludes this section as follows:

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yetno one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end… I know that everything God does will endure forever;..                  Ecclesiastes 3:11, 14a.

Beautiful. Eternity. Difficult to comprehend. But it, and He, and His work, will stand, secure, forever. The picture of your grief is in this big picture too. If it’s too difficult to understand now,  just trust – and wait. Peace with God is yours.

(I will contemplate these latter verses in a couple weeks.)