"It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no telling where you might be swept off to." - Bilbo Baggins

Friday, August 13, 2010

A time for everything

It's pretty ironic that I read the book of Ecclesiates while coming home from my trip to Denver this week. I am not sure if you have ever read Ecclesiates but it basically starts out with that everything is meaningless, or as the NKJV would put it, it's all vain. King Solomon with all his riches, experiences, fame, etc. came to the conclusion that it's all meaningless. As he continued on he realized that without God everything is truly meaningless, a chasing after the wind, for: "Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals. For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other." (Eccl 3:18-19) You see today we had to put Kody our cat down, very, very hard.

We had Kody for 12 years, Shannon surprised me with him about 5 months after we were married. So while on the one hand we realize that he is just a pet, on the other we are faced with the realization that we live after the fall and that this is the path we all must travel both men and animals. Earlier in Eccl. chapter 3 King Solomon goes into the Time for Everything, a time to be born and a time to die... a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance. So while we mourn, mourn the passing of a family pet, mourn the passing of time, mourn the fact that we all must pass away; we must remember that it is only for a time. Solomon also writes in Eccl. 7:1 "A good name is bettern than precious ointment and the day of death than the day of one's birth...". Better is the day of death than that of birth, that was written for the believer in Christ, the day of death will have us standing before the Lord of all creation. So while now is our time to weep and mourn, our weeping will turn to lauging and our mourning to dancing.


So long Kodiak Bear