“He has made
everything beautiful in its time.”
Ecclesiastes 3:11
These words jumped out at me from my
dining room table this morning, declaration emblazoned on a lovely
copper-colored pitcher, fall blooms spilling over the side.
In the three
hours I’d been awake, I had somehow managed to break one everyday
glass, the upper rack of my dishwasher, and also a decorative
canister I’ve had since we got married. One child was in bed with a
toothache, another plugging away at the computer, finishing a math
lesson I thought she’d done three days before; and a pair of chubby
legs were dangling where I could see through the opened bathroom door
that the three year old was washing his hands and watering the floor
in the process. I looked in the mirror at my disheveled ponytail and
sighed. It wasn’t looking very beautiful from my vantage point.
We hear the verse so much it becomes a
mere platitude. But this morning I thought a little deeper. He sees
everything beautiful—has made it beautiful. Everything … and in
Greek, the word means just that—everything, the totality, each and
everything. In its time. Perhaps this is where the trouble is.
We don’t want to see God’s beauty in this moment, this time—and
this time is all we have. Most mamas are always thinking ahead.
Things will be so much better …
When he sleeps through the night.
When she’s finally potty trained.
When my husband gets a new job.
When we get a bigger house.
When we find a great church.
And the beautiful moments of our lives
slip by as we reach, reach, reach after moments that are not yet.
When you dance, the
most important thing next to knowing the steps is keeping the time.
And the dancer isn’t in charge of the
music’s timing. You have to listen, to feel the beat in order to
keep in step with your Partner. Earlier in this passage we find a
clue as to why that’s so important:
“To everything there
is a season
And a time for every
purpose under heaven.” Ecclesiastes 3:1
(Come on, sing it with me, you know you
want to … “Turn, turn, turn …” Just can’t help it!)
Can we embrace the time we’re in? Can
we ask the Lord to help us accept that this—this time, this season,
this tempo– that this is all we have, and this is beautiful? Can we
leave time in the hands of the great Designer, put ourselves in His
arms, and let Him lead us through the dance we are in?
Sally speaks here in chapter three of
Dancing With My Father about how she too was always looking
for “the next thing” to make her happy. And then one day she
realized that here on earth, things just aren’t always going to go
the way we like! We must let go of the things we hold on to so
tightly and build our lives upon eternal foundations if we are going
to find joy in this life.
“God’s desire is for
us to experience true joy and deep fulfillment. It must start,
however, with the journey into the recesses of our heart. It is only
as we release our hold on the things that we think we need to be
truly happy, when we open our hands freely, that we experience true
joy. We yield our demands and expectations to Him so that we may take
His hand and let Him lead us into the dance of joy. He is the One who
will teach us. But it requires a total relinquishment of self and a
simple trust in a great God, simple faith to understand that He who
created joy will lead us on the pathway that ends in the joy that
will last forever.” ~ Sally Clarkson, Dancing With My Father
So, let me ask you the
question Sally asks us here at the end of this chapter:
“Are you willing to give
away all that you think is valuable in order to find all that truly
has worth?”
And Click here to see a video from Sally about chapter 3.
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To view previous book study posts, click the image below and check out our Book club Facebook page for more discussion throughout the week with over 200 women from Mom Heart and The Better Mom who are reading Dancing With My Father together!
About Misty Krasawski