Interpretation by Jim Powell

I played the piano for a memorial service this week, 

and reconnected with Jim Powell (one of Jud's brothers), 

who was doing the service.  

He read the following, 

and it made this well-loved scripture come alive for me.  

How nice to reconnect with Jim and this passage in new ways.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-9

I have seen many of the events of life and I have studied how and why things are the way they are.  I have concluded that much of this life is beyond my control and my understanding.  I try to give reasons to the things that happen but there seems to be no adequate rationale.  I try to understand but it continues to be a mystery.  I am constantly being confronted with experiences that are confusing and over which I have no control:

• The times when we celebrate birth and then we experience death,
• the times when we are active and thrilled to participate in life and then the times when we are quiet and withdrawn,

• the times when our spirits suffer and then when we experience healing,
• the times when we laugh heartily and the times when we weep profoundly,

• the serious times and the frivolous times,
• the times we remember and the times we forget,

• times when we feel successful and those times we feel that we have failed,
• times when we persevere and “hang in there” and times when we succumb and abdicate,

• times when we overtly express our love and times when we love but don’t show it,
• times when our hearts are filled with tears of grief and times when our grief is silent and too tired to give expression,

• times when we are the one who gives support and times when we are in desperate need of someone to hold and support us,
• times when we want to be with others and times when solitude is an oasis.

So what am I to do?  How am I to respond when I am in the middle of these confusing and mysterious times?  What is my purpose?  How do I live through these mysterious and difficult events in my life?

“The end of the matter is this: love God.  Trust the ways of God.  For God knows the plight of man; those things that we are able to see and have some understanding, and those things that are mysterious and hidden from sight.”