For Evertyhing A Season

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what 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 throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, 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 for war, and a time for peace.

What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. I know that whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by. Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 

This passage has always been one of my favorites since I was a child. I usually focus these daily reflections on the Gospel, yet I find this passage from Ecclesiastes the bedrock of my understanding of the Gospels. There are always beginnings and endings, mourning and ecstatic joy, as well as everything in-between. God's love is eternal and God's desire is for us to enjoy the gifts we work for and those we have not. God lives with us in our brokenness and our completeness, no matter if we acknowledge the Creator's hands or not. We can lose sleep and friends, trying to manipulate our time and the seasons, yet all of it and all of us are in God's hands. 

We are invited by God to find the gift in each new day and to seek understanding about our times. The Creator of all asks us to be in this present moment for today, there are people weeping and people dancing, people dying and people being born to new life. We are all in this together, finite beings nestled in infinite hands. We can choose to ignore the gifts of today, or we can celebrate and mourn along with those who need us.