To God be the glory for helping us all through the times and seasons of our lives. (Kingdom lane Ministry, Serenity Prayer) Heavenly Father God, please grant us the Serenity, and humility to accept the things we cannot change. Courage, and Strength Oh God, to change the things that is in our ability to change. And the Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding we need to know the difference, thank you Father in Jesus name we pray, amen. Long ago another human just like us prayed and was granted Wisdom, Knowledge, and Understanding in an enormous proportion because of his heartfelt, unselfish prayer to his God, the great King Solomon was that man. Now in our time, as we read his writings in the Bible, it is not hard to believe that he had a great understanding of earthly times and seasons. In the Bible book of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, he wrote, " To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time pluck up that which 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 cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to loose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, 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 of war, and a time of peace;" All these writings of time changes from so long ago is being fulfilled day by day in all of humans' experiences. Each of us experience seasonal changes in our lives, some more drastic than other. A time of plenty when everything seems to be going well, and a time of little when we are trying to figure out what is going on; A time in which the bills are being paid in a nice timely way, and a time when the money gets very funny because more is going out than coming in that usually create stress if it is allowed. A time when we feel like making love, and a time we just don't feel like being bothered and sometime cannot even explained our true feelings of why. A time when the job seems as if it will be everlasting, and a time when people are being laid off unexpectedly finding oneself without a job. A time when the little cute babies seem like the world is turning the right way, and then before long the nice little babies grow up, and the right way world start going the opposite way. A time when we feel so peaceful within even saying life is good, and at time when we have to pray very hard for God's help in keeping from falling apart. A time when we get so excited over a new life being born, and a time when we can't help ourselves in mourning the death of a loved one because we are only humans, and even Jesus wept with Mary, and Martha when their brother Lazarus died to show that he understand our pain of life. A time when the family is feeling such peace and harmony, everyone seems to be getting along, and a time when out of the blue there is confusion everywhere even between twin sisters. A time we find ourselves helping everyone that we can, and a time when no one seems to be available when we need help. A time when our loving relationship seems that it will last forever, and a time when we are pondering, and wondering what really happened, the long-lasting love took a wrong turn and disappear. A time when many people felt the dreadful shame of sins that we inherited from Adam, and Eve, and a time when dancing up and down the isle of the church can't seem to stop because through the awesome grace and mercy of our Heavenly Father and giving of ourselves to Christ brought a wonderful change in our lives. Everyone born on planet earth have a testimony even although when the testimony time comes no one is standing. From Adam telling how good, and close he was feeling with his Creator, telling God the names he had gave to the many creatures, and how through enticement and wrong decision blaming his wife Eve, find himself and Eve outside the gate of Eden and could not reenter, from then down through the many, many generations. Noah and his family story of surviving the great flood, Noah admitting that he could not had survive without the God given intelligence of his wife who was tremendous in keeping the house in order. Abraham, telling his two part story of the promise of God that his wife Sarah would gave him a son while in her mind she was too over age to do so, then out of the blue it seems, came the nice, and not so nice suggestion of Sara, causing him to commit adultery with her maid Leah, which produce a son name Ishmael. God promise in the right time also came to pass as God words will never failed, and Sarah did conceived and had a son which they named Isaac. . Then it was Jacob dealing with time and seasons in his life with his four babies mothers, Leah, the mother of Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun, and Dinah, Jacob's only daughter. Rachael the woman he worked 14 years to marry, had only two sons, Joseph, and Benjamin. Zilpah, his first wife Leah maid is the mother of Gad, and Asher. and last but not least, Bilhah, his wife Rachael's maid the mother of Dan, and Naphtali encountering twelve sons and one daughter. These twelve sons of Jacob became the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel. Samson and Delilah telling what damage good loving can do to a man. Of course, we know that David testimony would take a very long time to tell, sending that man to his death just to get his wife, and fleeing from his own son who was trying to kill him. Joseph testimony of how close he came to really losing his sanity when the love of his life Mary the virgin told him that she was pregnant, and he know that he did not make love to her. God had to quickly dispatch an angel to help the poor man. To God be the Glory forever. I could go on, and on with various names of people with their various personal life experience, but I think that I have said enough to generate the understanding that as King Solomon said, nothing is new under the Sun. sometime when we are experiencing seasonal changes in our lives we might feel like it is personal and that is exactly what it is, because who feels it, knows it. and although someone might say cheer up my brother or sister, it is easier said than done. In the Bible book of Genesis, the example of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which the first couple ate from and causes them to die spiritually, is the same as choosing to function in between good and evil, positive and negative choices. Our loving Creator desire to endow His human creation with the freedom of choice, through the process of a free will that the enemy of God took advantage of, causing detrimental complication in our ability to choose correctly. The person we rush to choose thinking he or she would be the better choice turn out to be devil in disguise, and the one we ignore was the same one with a good heart who came to our rescue. One of the many ways to shed light on the understanding of seasonal life changes is to reflect on the wonderful electric current that we cannot do without now in our modern-day lifestyle. (AC) or alternating current that cause the light to our pathway have a positive and negative fluctuation in its movement, the graph will shows that there is a straight line from where it starts, then it move upward as describe to be positive for a period of time, then come back down to the strait line, and then proceed down past the line in the opposite direction as describe as the negative and continue to repeat itself from positive to negative that is call a cycle. In the US, we recognized this cycle time to be 60 cycles per second, and many more frequencies much faster than that. The same seasonal life changes as the AC cycle happens in everyone's life, although it is not at the same time duration of change. Our strait line is the awesome brain that God gave us that is better than the most sophisticated computer. We have the ability to choose from the positive side of things, and situations around us or we can choose from the negative side. then also, outside of our ability to choose, there is an automatic occurrence in which over time, changes will happen on both the positive and negative side of our life that we will not have any control over, and so we pray for more positive than negative occurrences. Creation seems to be functioning on a digital automatic cycle concept. God do not have to come every three months to fix or tweak anything that He has made like we humans does so often. Our lives whether we like it or not are going to navigate within the cycle of time, and seasons, sometime there are going to be plenty to work with, and sometimes we just have to work with what we are blessed to have. Therefore, when we find ourselves in the season of plenty it will be wise to save for it should be understood that another season is coming. A very good occurrence example in past time to reflect on is the Bible story of Jacob's son Joseph whose brothers had first told his father that he was kill by an animal showing him the blooded clothes left behind, then throw him down in a well, then took him out and sold him to human hustler way back then cause Joseph to end up in Egypt, working for a rich man, innocently accused by his boss wife of sexual misconduct, end up in prison, and from there to become like the vice president of Egypt, and within time forgave his brothers for all that they have done to him because of the awesome blessing on his life with the gift of dreams interpretation. Like Joseph, even though we have gifts from God's blessings on our lives, as long as we are here on this planet call earth, we are going to experience the ups, and down of what is called life. Back to having plenty, so Joseph was brought from prison because of a dream that Pharoah had that none of his wise guys around him could not help him to understand, but someone who experience the great gift from the dream's interpretation of Joseph mention his name to Pharoah, so he came and told pharaoh what his dream meant with suggestions. Joseph told Pharoah that a season of plenty was coming in which the Pharoah should build extra storage places around the city, and after that season of plenty another season of nothing will also hit the city, and because of Joseph awesome dream interpretation Egypt and all the surrounding cities were save from starvation including Joseph own family, his father Jacob, and brothers who did not even recognize him in his upgraded vice presidential attire. I hope you are inspired so far from what I have written about Joseph experience that you will be enticed to read the whole story from the Bible in Genesis chapter 41. We as humans will never understand the working of the Universe, the Bible says that we are made a little lower than the angels, and so we are limited even in our abilities to know what the next hour will bring. Everyone I think would agree that nothing seems to last forever, even in relationships or working at a certain place, meeting new people, just like Christmas comes and go, everything is only for a season, and so we are only building memory of time experiences. Solomon continues in verse 9-14 saying, " What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth? I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it. He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end. I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of his labour, it is the gift of God. I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be forever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doeth it, that men should fear before him." My sisters and brothers in Christ, the only thing that will be constant is change, whether we like it or not, it has been that way throughout all the many generations before us. With the help of the Holy Spirit in us, we will humble ourselves to deal with the negative fluctuation of time and the things that it will bring that we will have no control over to change what is happening. With God's help, as people of God, we will always strive and willing to do the very best that we can for self and family and even lend a helping hand to friends and strangers when we can. |
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