Good morning…

Three hours after I facilitated a lively Sunday school discussion on the unavoidable opposites littering our lives, polar opposites laid out in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, I attended a time of remembrance for a young man who lost his long battle with addiction. His obituary explained he had overdosed from “a heart too heavy for this world.” This Thursday, he would have celebrated his 30th birthday.

Fighting back tears, the mother and the stepmother of the deceased opened their Bible and read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to weep and a time to laugh. A time to kill and a time to heal. The heartbreaking extremes took on powerful new meaning. This young man was deeply loved by so many gathered, yet the immense love of friends and family was not enough to keep his candle burning when the winds of darkness swirled out of control.

How will God ever make this brokenness beautiful?

I have seen the burden God has placed on us all. Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. So I concluded there is nothing better than to be happy and enjoy ourselves as long as we can, Ecclesiastes 3:10-12 (NLT),
Sue