Times for Everything, Nothing and All Between

“There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under heaven...”

~Ecclesiastes 3:1 (NIV).

Life is all-encompassing. The whole suite of experience—as a word, so understated—and a vast array from opulence to desolation—they all take place in one lifetime; any lifetime.

Times like these cater to all tastes eventually.

Life’s Too Real

But far too much of life is incredibly real; too real for some. They take to life as if a fairy tale, denying the very act of physics all too large for just about anyone to handle, at least that way.

Life has a sharp bite to it at times; it hisses at us like an incensed cobra coiled to strike. And then again, life also has a palatial softness about it, swooning with us romantically, but that too is invariably a trap for the dire times remain ahead.

Everything, nothing and all between. We have it all but we don’t want it all. ‘All’ is too much for us.

Paradoxes of Meaning – That’s Life

Most of us will never get close to understanding how meaningful life really is until we see, finally, its utter meaninglessness—that those things we ordinarily attach meaning to are fabricated nonsense’s. We get it all wrong for so long in all our lives. Only when we reach the bitter end do we see the choice of anti-choice that beckons before us.

Life is. We accept it or we continue to run. We run to God or we run from him; all our lives! There is no middle ground. Each moment’s a choice one way or the other. Each moment we choose an allegiance; each millisecond.

The only way to come to stately terms with life is to have an approach to life that is beyond life.

We understand very little of life whenever we kick against the pricks—period! Times are beyond us and we just ought to admit that. It’s in that sense of hopelessness that we cling to true hope. None of us knows what’s coming. The only way through is that sense of abiding aloneness we can only feel with God.

A Time Most Certain – Sadness

Sadness condemns us not. It becomes us not. Sadness is as real to life as happiness is. Both are accorded their opportunities—we live through both. And so we cheat the sadness? We thumb our noses at it? Sadness is our very own possession just as happiness is—and all things between.

Sadness is a safe place with God:

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted

and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

~Psalm 34:18 (NIV).

This is no pathetic cliché. Real power is known in the halls of sorrow with the Lord God.

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.