REFLECTION
Recently my wife and I bought a new house. With a growing family we required a house and section with more space than we previously had. The house we finally settled on was a real doer-upper. Luckily, my wife’s father owns a building company and in the space of 6 weeks they were able to completely renovate the interior before we moved in.

However, there is still much to do on the outside! The exterior needs a sand and a paint, a front fence would be nice for privacy, the deck needs finishing off and there’s a garden to plant and tend to, not to mention I would like to level out and resow the lawn.

A month after we moved in, we celebrated the birth of our second child. As you could imagine, being a parent to a toddler and a newborn leaves little time for other ‘projects’.

It is at times such as these that this verse reminds me that there is indeed a time and place for every activity under the sun. After initially planning to paint the exterior soon after moving in, I quickly came to recognise it wasn’t the season for this activity. My efforts to do so were creating a conflict between being present to family needs and trying to make time to sand and paint the exterior.

By heeding the wisdom from Ecclesiastes 3:1, it enabled me to identify the problem with my approach. I was not fully appreciating and honouring the season I was currently in as a father of two young girls. Additionally, I was not trusting that there would be a season in the future for the required work – that there was no rush to get the paint job done. By relinquishing this pressure, it enabled me to become more present to my wife and girls during this special time, which is the greatest gift we can give to our loved ones. 

If you are currently feeling overwhelmed by the activities of your life or if there are conflicts due to competing interests, then I’d invite you take a moment to explore in prayer if any of those activities are as urgent as they seem to be. After doing this quick audit, give yourself the freedom to defer the non-urgent tasks or projects to a future season, trusting that they will be fulfilled when the time is right.