A Time for Everything

A Time 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.

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil - this is the gift of God. I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him. Ecclesiastes 3:1-14
          



Sometimes we just have to surrender to the fact that God has a plan and it's purposeful - it's intentional - and it's higher than ours.  I have to tell you... I don't always like it.  I buck and I flail, but after a few temper tantrums and a lot of tears, I concede, knowing full well that He is God and I am not.  Through it, whatever it is, His grace is always sufficient.  I've learned that first-hand.

We also have to let go of the what-ifs.  "Would the outcome have been different, God, if I had known then what I know now, if we had chosen this and not that..."  It could drive a person crazy if you don't acknowledge that His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways.  I've learned that first-hand, too.

Knowing that we committed dad's health and treatment fully to His guidance through fervent prayers, i have to accept that it doesn't matter that we would do it differently today, God was and is control, and He has a time for everything.  After all, we're told in the Psalms that our days were numbered before one of them came to be.  

So, dad's last day came almost seven years ago and I can honestly say that I am reconciled to it being part of God's plan - His timing.

Days often come, though, when I miss him so much it's tangible.  Today is one of those days.  Mom and dad were married 50 years ago today, and I sure wish I was in a grand room filled with family and friends celebrating them and their years together.

There would be music and dancing, and laughs and reminiscing.  His great grandchildren, whom he's not met on this side of heaven, would be up way too late but they'd be giggling on the dance floor right along with us till they couldn't keep their eyes open a moment longer and would fall asleep on some loved-one's lap.

That's what I wish today held.  But today was a different kind of day and God planned it, so I'm okay.

My Mom and Dad on February 22, 1964 with so much life ahead of them.

Sharing on The Sunday Social.