A Season for Reflection

In the Everyday Journal group I belong to we are exploring the season we are in. I am using the contrasts in Ecclesiastes 3 metaphorically as way to examine my heart and mind in the season of life I am in. Unfortunately my month got very busy and I did not get to do a blog post for each verse as I had planned. So, this post will give the reflection questions for the remaining verses for anyone who is interested in using them. 

Photo by Aaron Burden, unsplash.com

"A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance." Ecclesiastes 3:4

• Are there areas in your life where you have not given yourself time of permission to grieve properly? Any losses that you mourn? Any heart aches that you rushed by, covered over, moved past without allowing yourself time to experience grief?
• Ask God to help you see those wounded places and to help you give them the time and space needed to grieve them.
• What needs to be celebrated in your life? 
• What has brought you joy?
• Take time to experience and express gratitude to God for those things and times.

"A time to scatter stones and a time to gather them." Ecclesiastes 3:5a

Scattering and gathering stones reminds me of the altars that would be built in the Old Testament as a way of remembering what God had done. Read Deuteronomy 27:1-8 where God told his people to build an altar of stones to remember His commandments.

• Are there times and events in your life where God protected you, rescued you, carried you through? 
• Do you need to do something significant to help you remember them and to remind you of God's faithfulness? Maybe an art journal page or a piece of art or even a sculpture of stones in your garden.
• Or maybe you have allowed things or habits in your life to become idols and you need to scatter them and return to fully worshiping God alone. Confess these things to God.
• What spiritual practices might you engage in to help you focus on God?
• A practice I did at a retreat one time was to write something I was struggling with on a stone, then leave that stone somewhere as a symbol of letting go of it and giving it to God in trust. What do you need to let go of?

"A time to embrace and a time to refrain." Ecclesiastes 3:5b

This makes me think of spiritual disciplines. Some are disciplines of engagement - embracing times of Bible study, prayer, worship, serving others, etc. Others are disciplines of abstinence - refraining from things in order to draw closer to God with things like fasting, silence, simplicity, serving in secret, etc.

• Is this a season where you need to make more time to embrace the things that draw you closer to God? 
• Do you need to deepen your time in the Word or prayer? 
• Do you need to focus more on serving others rather than simply being focused on your own needs?
• Do you need to refrain from something for a time in order to be reconnected with your dependence on God? 
• Do you need to fast from food or social media or spend some time in solitude?

"A time to search and a time to give up." Ecclesiastes 3:6a

• This seems like a great connection to reflection. Ask God to search your heart. (Psalm 139:23-24)
• What does God reveal to you? Are your thoughts more Christ-centered or self-centered?
• Are you searching for things in life to fulfill you that God alone can fulfill?
• What might you need to let go of or give up in order to trust and rest in God alone?

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” ~Augustine

"A time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend." Ecclesiastes 3:6b-7a
This makes me think of Jesus talking in Matthew 6:19-20 about treasure: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." 

• What areas of your life and which practices help you keep a kingdom focus?
• Where do you need to throw away the things that are earthly and getting too much of your focus, that may be taking your time away from God? 
• What areas of your life need to be built up or mended so that you "treasure God, investing your life in what God is doing and devoting yourself to the good of other people"?

Author Jan Johnson, in her book Abundant Simplicity, says that focusing on the messages the culture feeds us can often take our minds off of Kingdom matters. We need to look to Jesus and "subtly replace them with thoughts of treasuring God, investing our life in what God is doing and devoting ourselves to the good of other people."

"A time to be silent and a time to speak." Ecclesiastes 3:7b

• Sometimes it is best to not speak our minds if doing so may offend or cause someone harm. Ask God to reveal any areas where He may be calling you to silence your voice.
• Proverbs 31:8-9, however, call us to speak for the voiceless and destitute. Are there things in life that scream injustice to you? How might you speak up to help benefit those things or people?
• Do you need to refrain from gossip or unkind talk? Do you need to defend those being spoken ill of?
• Do you need to practice giving kind words more often?

"A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace." Ecclesiastes 3:8

• I personally struggle with loving others well, yet feel the clear call of God to do so. Ask God to show you who you may not be acting in loving ways toward. Spend time praying for them and asking God to help you love them.
• What does it look like to love your neighbors? 
• What are some steps you might take to show them love?
• How might you counter the hate and division that seems to permeate our world?
• How can you share God's love in your community today?

Thank you for journeying through a season of reflection with me this month. I pray that you will find, as I have, that reflection on all things - good and bad - helps us draw near to God, who has "made everything beautiful in its time". Ecclesiastes 3:11

Previous posts of reflection on Ecclesiastes 3 can be found here, here, here, and here.

A Time to Build

A Time to Build

In the Everyday Journal group I belong to we are exploring the season we are in. I am using the contrasts in Ecclesiastes 3 metaphorically as way to examine my heart and mind in the season of life I am in. Today we come to the second contrast in verse 3.

"To everything there is a season....A time to tear down and a time to build up." Ecclesiastes 3:3

What comes to mind when I see tear down and build up is boundaries. Personal boundaries are the defenses we create - consciously or subconsciously - to protect ourselves emotionally. Like fences put up around a property to protect one physically, we build walls around the things or people that have hurt us in the past. Many times these boundaries are built when we are children, long before we have the capability to examine people and situations intellectually and then determine a course of action. As a result, in adulthood these boundaries are often unnoticed and happen automatically in response to a situation or a particular person. Our boundaries are often triggered, not something we do as a conscious action or choice.

As we mature, and often with the help of other people in our lives, we become aware of these automatic response boundaries and begin the work of determining which are healthy and which are unhealthy. It is often in marriage or other very close relationships that these boundaries are revealed. I grew up in a home with one parent who was an alcoholic and the other who was emotionally insecure. As a result of the dysfunction in my family I learned to put up boundaries at a very young age. In my adult years, at various seasons and stages of my life, I have learned to recognize the boundaries I built as a child, and some I added as an adult, and began the journey - the lifelong journey - of tearing down the unhealthy ones and building up or producing healthy ones. 

Not all boundaries are unhealthy. For example, when my dad was still alive I felt it necessary to protect my young daughter from unhealthy behavior. So, I got up the nerve to tell my dad that if he drank too much when we were with him, then we would leave or ask him to leave if we were at my house. To me, it was a healthy decision to not allow my daughter to be exposed to the emotional roller coaster that went along with overindulgence in alcohol. Often I find I must limit my time with and exposure to people who drain me too much. Often these are people who themselves have unhealthy boundaries, unable to see where they end and another person begins, often becoming overly dependent on other people resulting in unhealthy relationships. Knowing myself and knowing the activities and people that energize or drain me, enables me to build healthy boundaries.

For reflection:

What boundaries have been built in your life? Defensiveness is often an indicator.
Ask God to reveal which of these walls you have built are unhealthy.
Which ones might God be prompting you to tear down? To trust in Him instead of self-protection?
How might your risk taking those walls down?
Or where might you need to build some healthy boundaries? Healthy relational or time boundaries?

"When life hurts us, it’s easy to put walls, rationalizing that God allows them so we can protect ourselves. But self-protection is not the same as God-protection. Self-protection keeps the emphasis on us—on self. The walls we build after we are hurt are not always God’s spiritual protection for our hearts." 

~Esther Fleece, No More Faking Fine, Zondervan Pubplishing

My month has been much busier than I had anticipated and I was not able to do as much with this project as I had planned. So my next post will simply be reflection questions to go with the rest of the contrasts in Ecclesiastes 3.

For November our Everyday Journal group will be practicing gratitude with a guide from Bernice Hopper.

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group

Bernice Hopper, Valerie Sjodin and I are using one journal to record events, experiences and relationships and  to explore our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We are each blogging about our experiences and our art. If you would like to connect with others about creatively organizing your word, your ideas, thoughts, prayers, events, or your projects all in one journal, you are invited to join our Facebook group: Everyday Journals – Living Your Word of the Year.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/203309083575277/

Hashtags on Instagram: #everydayjournals2018, #livingyourword2018

Check out the other blogs:

Bernice: http://www.newlycreative.com/

Valerie: https://valeriesjodin.com/blog/ 

A Time to Plant

A Time to Plant

"A time to plant and a time to uproot" Ecclesiastes 3:2

When I think about planting, immediately Jesus' Parable of the Sower comes to mind. In order for planting to be successful and abundant, good soil is required - whether that planting is in the soil of the earth or in our hearts and minds, as this parable points to. The NIV Study Bible notes says this regarding an abundant crop that comes from good soil:

"The quantity of increase depends on the quality of soil."

Luke's Gospel has an account of the Parable of the Sower in Luke 8:4-15. I won't quote the full passage, but will simply focus on how Jesus explains the parable. The seed scattered on the ground represents "the word of God" (vs 11). He goes on, "

"Those along the path are the ones who hear, and then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved. Those on the rocky ground are the ones who receive the word with joy when they hear it, but they have no root. They believe for a while, but in the time of testing they fall away. The seed that fell among thorns stands for those who hear, but as they go on their way they are choked by life’s worries, riches and pleasures, and they do not mature.But the seed on good soil stands for those with a noble and good heart, who hear the word, retain it, and by persevering produce a crop." Luke 8:12-15

We have a responsibility to examine the soil of our heart and minds in order to give the seed - the Word of God - a healthy place to grow and produce fruit. So again, let's use this contrast of planting and uprooting, found in Ecclesiastes 3:2, metaphorically for reflection.

Ask God to examine your heart and life and reflect on these questions.

• Where might there be weeds that are preventing the good soil in your life? Habits that distract you and keep you from spending time in God's Word and in Prayer.
• What spiritual practices may help you choke those weeds? 
• What might God want to plant in you right now, in this season? 
• What might He want to uproot? 
• What might need pruning? 

In her book, Abundant Simplicity, Jan Johnson speaks of the spiritual disciplines of engagement and of abstinence. 

"Disciplines of engagement help us take in the life of God. Disciplines of abstinence help us let go of life draining behaviors. We need to exhale what is unnecessary as well as inhale nourishment from God." ~ Jan Johnson

Disciplines of engagement are things such as study, prayer, serving others, worship, community, etc. Disciplines of abstinence can include thins such as fasting, solitude, silence, serving in secret, frugality, simplicity of speech and time, etc.

Jan Johnson points out that we are more prone to practice disciplines of engagement. We fill up. But, she says, "They may know, practice and teach spiritual disciplines, but they still find themselves being impatient, egotistical or pushy. This is because they have not blended engagement disciplines with abstinence disciplines, which prune away self-indulgence and willfulness...If we don;t practice abstinence disciplines regularly, we find ourselves stuck. We become reliant on our own devices..." ~Jan Johnson

Practicing disciplines of abstinence may help us get in touch with those things that may be keeping us from a deeper walk with God. God may use these times spent in spiritual practices to help prune us for greater growth. This is definitely what happens in seasons such as Lent, when we choose to abstain from a particular food or practice and instead choose to focus on God. What might God be calling you to in this particular season?

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group

Bernice Hopper, Valerie Sjodin and I are using one journal to record events, experiences and relationships and  to explore our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We are each blogging about our experiences and our art. If you would like to connect with others about creatively organizing your word, your ideas, thoughts, prayers, events, or your projects all in one journal, you are invited to join our Facebook group: Everyday Journals – Living Your Word of the Year.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/203309083575277/

Hashtags on Instagram: #everydayjournals2018, #livingyourword2018

Check out the other blogs:

Bernice: http://www.newlycreative.com/

Valerie: https://valeriesjodin.com/blog/