Time

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens….”  Ecclesiastes 3:1

I have a client/boss retiring today after twenty-eight years with her company.  I have worked with her all of those twenty-eight years.  Two thoughts came to mind.  Well, more than those two came to mind, but among them were these two.  First, it occurred to me that I have been involved in or attended a lot of events lately related to retirement and death.  If I thought about that much it would certainly make sense to me, but I am choosing not to do so.  Second, it occurred to me how little I respect time.  As I contemplate that I realize that what I focus on are events in time, those things that are talked about in Ecclesiastes 3:2-8:

“a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace”

I focus on those events as they occur, worry about them occurring, or fret that they did/did not occur.  Somehow I fail to see that “time” is involved in all of those events.  The one constant throughout that passage is that word – “time.”  Those events are markers of time, but time is the constant.  In that sense, time has its meaning and its own intrinsic value, whether a second, a minute, an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year, or twenty-eight years.  Time has meaning.