Ecclesiastes 3 – Turn! Turn! Turn!

What poetry.  Read it again – and again.  It just keeps speaking to you.  Read it tomorrow, next week, with the joys and sorrows of that day, and it’ll speak again.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.  Whatever else it says, it tells us to live now.  Pay attention.  Be present, to this place, this person, this moment.

And then this:  He has made everything beautiful in its time.  Easy to believe when life is good.  When the sun’s shining and we’re headed to the beach.  When we just got a promotion and the raise to go with it.  When everyone’s happy and healthy.

But then there are those other days.  When money’s tight – when it’s raining but it doesn’t matter because there’ll be no trip to the beach this year.  When money’s the last thing on our minds because everyone’s not healthy and we’d do anything to change that but there’s nothing we can do.

Of course, everything’s beautiful when our world is at peace.  Or we’re celebrating new beginnings, laughing and dancing.  But what about those other days?  When it’s time to uproot or tear down.  Time to weep, to mourn.  Time to die, for someone we can’t imagine living without.  How can that time be beautiful? 

It’s hard to articulate in the same way beauty is hard to define.  But in God’s hands anything, everything can be made beautiful, even that “other day” you hope never comes.

- Paul Abbott