A Time For Everything

I find it oddly comforting that Scripture says everything has happened before and everything will happen again. One of my dearest friends is struggling through a season of health challenges right now and I was meditating on Ecclesiastes 3:1-15 this evening as I prayed for her (it's the passage made familiar to most of us by The Byrd's song, "Turn! Turn! Turn!"). Having struggled with my own seasons of deep depression and anxiety, I am comforted by the fact when I experience these things I'm far from alone - I know many people have journeyed through similar seasons in life. It's easy for me to see these things when I'm writing from a good emotional place, it's harder to have perspective in the darkness.

As I write this, the COVID19 global pandemic is taking some lives and changing all our lives. It feels apocalyptic, foreign, new. But the truth is, it's not. Yes, there are few living people who remember the Spanish Flu of 1918, the last pandemic of comparison to what we are currently experiencing; however, this is not the first, nor will it likely be the last time our world sees something of this measure. There is comfort in knowing that everything has happened before and everything will happen again.

As I pray for relief for my friend, I am grateful this is all unsurprising to an unchanging God. I am thankful for how He is and how He will use this all for the good of those who believe Him and are called according to His purposes. I believe this no matter the outcome. It is easy for me to trust this truth because I have lived this truth. I have seen God bring beauty from ashes out of the darkest and ugliest things in my own life, time and time again. My marriage, my family, my salvation are all testimonies to this.