Ecclesiastes 3 - an Interpretation

I’m sure we all have a favourite passage from the Bible, whether we’re religious or not. Mine is most definitely Ecclesiastes 3 and here is the King James Version:

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.”

Most of us are particularly familiar with this verse as it is generally read at every funeral that we’ve ever attended. But for me, it goes so much deeper and I must admit that I get quite emotional when I read it! So I thought I’d share with you, my take on this beautiful piece.

Let me ask you first to bring to mind that we are all spirit and occasionally we pop down to the earth to live out an existence. During each of those existences, we choose to go through particular experiences in order to learn particular lessons in the pursuit of the healing of our souls. And this piece from Ecclesiastes explains in a perfect succinct way, the journey of our soul.

Every lifetime that we live can be viewed as a season of our soul that has to experience every purpose under the heaven. So, yes in coming to the earth, there is a time to be born and a time to die but if we dig even deeper then we can see that each time we overcome a lesson we are essentially being born into greater knowledge and wisdom and every time we let go of that which no longer serves us, that is the time to allow that part of our existence to die. We are constantly taking in things that happen to us and around us and sometimes we don’t even realise it – this is the knowledge of the universal consciousness being planted and every time we manage to grow just that little further is when we pluck up that which is planted.

So too for the time to kill and time to heal. This is happening continually as we allow ourselves to flow from one lifetime to another, healing our souls, killing off that which we finally understand is false illusion, breaking down old belief systems and building new and stronger platforms from which to operate. Throughout our many existences, we experience good times and bad and through the laughter, the tears, the mourning, the dancing and the casting away of stones, we learn to love and embrace our souls. And we learn to understand that it is okay for us to take time to gather up the stones again, even if for a while we have tossed them aside – the stones being those experiences that we perhaps found too heavy to bear in one lifetime, but stronger to bear in another.

As we begin to love and accept ourselves for who we are, we come to the realisation that there is a time to speak our truth, but there is also place for keeping quiet. And it is in the keeping quiet that we learn to listen and through listening we learn to love and accept our fellow souls living out their human existences. Finally through it all, we learn that there is a time to love and a time to hate and that through these emotions, we overcome so many of our fears and misinterpretations, our misrepresentations and the very reason why we are here. Through war with ourselves, facing our own inner demons head-on, we learn too that after the battle is won, there can be only peace – that beautiful all-consuming inner peace that each of us as spirit and human beings, are so ardently seeking.

So I leave you with this and hope I’ve given you something to think about. I wish you a beautiful day, filled with God’s love and the blessings from the Angels who walk with us, guide us and protect us always.