A Time to Weep and Laugh

These verses 1-8 that we are studying show us that there is a time and a place for every purpose; for everything that God created for man to do and to experience under heaven. The object of our study is to see that there is a time in God’s mind; there is a right and appropriate time for us to engage in the things which are listed here. And then, we also need to see, that there is a time that is not appropriate to do certain things. Indeed, there may be times when it may be downright sinful to do so. And so I am hoping that we, having learned from the Scriptures, when the appropriate time is, will learn to apply this truth to our lives. We will learn the right time to weep and the right time to laugh if we look at other portions of Scripture which comment upon the verse under consideration. Verse 4 says that there is, “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance”. I said to you, in our last study, that the words of the second couplet are a comment upon, or an amplification of, the first couplet. In other words, the words weeping and mourning should go together in our consideration. And the words laughing and dancing should go together. They build off each other and they help make the meaning clear. Let’s first take the subject of the time for weeping and mourning.