A Time to Mourn and a Time to Dance

This past week in my community, two middle school age girls were laid to rest after moving on from this life to the next due to a car accident.  They, along with their grandfather, left a family and a lot of friends completely devastated and mourning.  The young girls were the same age as my son.  When I look at him and I think about it all, I get extremely emotional. What good is to come from death at a young age? Why does this kind of thing happen at all to innocent young people and just anyone? And then I was reminded. 

Back in 1997 (don't even start...I'm old), I remember waking up to my Mom sitting on the end of my bed.  She had just hung up the phone and it was the early hours of the morning.  She told me that my friend had died in a car accident.  There was an age gap between us but we were very close. She was in high school, her senior year, and just a few days short of graduating. She was killed along with three other high school seniors and our community was completely in shock and devastated, much like today. 

I remember walking outside and crying out to God, "Why did you take her?" I remember thinking that it wasn't fair for her to die because death was for old people. It was supposed to be expected, not just sprung on you in the middle of the night. I wrote a lot of bad poetry but it helped me process. I wrote letters. I had dreams of saying goodbye. I cried for days and little things would just completely set me off emotionally.  I heard her voice everywhere, I saw her bright golden hair in the sun and her smile in the beauty of everything. 

At her funeral, a passage from the Bible was read and to this day I still think of that funeral and of her everytime I hear it:

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
    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..."
            Ecclesiastes 3:1-4

 There's more to these verses but the last one, "a time to mourn and a time to dance", is the one that stuck with me and several of us because we were dancers and our friend was our teacher.  It was like God was telling me that it was okay to be sad because my friend died but also it was okay to continue on with my life because that is what she would want me to do and to keep dancing.  It was cliche for sure but I heard the Holy Spirit louid and clear.

As I have gotten older, the opposite meanings of these verses mean more...the juxtapositon (vocab word for this week...two things put together to contrast that creates an effect...like light and dark or death and life). A time to mourn and a time to dance are definitely two different ideas.  Death and life are definitely two different ideas.  Light and dark.  You get the picture.  But to have one is to have the other.  You cannot understand one of these concepts without having knowledge of the other.  To know that something is in the light, you have to know what in the dark means. To know that something or someone has died is to know that once it had life.  To have the freedom to be joyful and dance is to know what it means to be sad and mourning. 

I guess what I am getting at is that having both is important and that is why we have bad things happen sometimes. Without those bad things, we wouldn't know what the good ones are. The apostle Paul wrote in Romans 8:28, "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." Paul basically says that everything that happens under the sun can work for the good of those who love God. 

We, as Christians, can justify death because we know the good things that do come of it for those that love God. God can be glorified through death. He was glorified through the death of his own Son. He was glorified through my friend's death by being the turning point for many young people to accept Christ and realize that we are not immortal. He was glorifed through the life she lived because we saw Christ in her and through her. And just like those sweet young girls and their grandfather's death, God is glorified. We are in the mourning but the dancing will come again. 

In your roughest times, good times will come. Please know that our life is not promised from one minute to the next and if you don't know Christ and want to learn more about Him, feel free to ask me or someone you know. If you want to know more about Him and have no one to talk to, feel free to email me at stephaniecwilkes@gmail.com. I'd love to tell you about Him. He is still good in the bad times.