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 weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance...a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away...a time to keep silence, and a time to speak.
This verse helps me a lot when I'm tempted by worries or regrets - or when I feel myself being pulled in all directions or running around trying to do ten different things.
The very construction of the verse evokes the ebb and flow of the ocean tide, as if to remind the reader that everything comes full circle in its own time, and the waters will always return to wash the shore clean.
And yet - we are human beings, not millions of lifeless, anonymous grains of sand that make up the waiting seashore. Sure, it's easy to shrug our shoulders and say, "Hey, that's life." Is it? Or is there something more we can do to make it different, make it better - for ourselves, for other people?
I think this verse is meant to remind us that we are called not to passive acceptance of life’s ups and downs, but to intelligent and free decisions about how to respond to the circumstances in which we find ourselves every day.
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