“There is a time for everything…” Ecc. 3:1

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once described a contest he was asked to judge looking for the most caring child. The winner turned out to be a four-year old boy whose next door neighbor, an elderly gentleman, recently lost his wife. When he saw the man crying, the little boy went to him, climbed onto his lap, and just sat there. When his mother later asked him what he said to the neighbor, the little boy said, “Nothing… I just helped him cry.”

Who says a child can teach us a thing or two? This child understood and acted upon what we adults too often fail to even understand—there is a time for everything, even crying. In one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, Solomon reminds us that the wise get it when it comes to making the most of time. In other words, a wise person knows when it’s the right time for something to be done and the right something for the time.

Procrastinators, on the other hand, might know when something needs to be done, but rarely do it when it should be done. That usually results in relatively small tasks growing into mountains of stress. I speak from personal experience!

Time is like a coin God has given me to spend. I determine how it will be spent, but if I am not careful, I will come to the end of the day, and eventually, the end of my life, only to discover the coins are gone without much to show for them. Wisdom knows that it’s not just a matter of spending, but spending at the right time for the right thing—sort of like climbing up in someone’s lap to help them cry.

As wise grandparents, we all want our grandkids to know the value and preciousness of this gift called time. I urge you to read Ecclesiastes 3 again, and ask the Lord to show you how to spend some time doing something crazy or fun with your grandkids (even a phone call or card could work) that lets them know how important they are. May God grant us wisdom to use our time well and appropriately so they can learn by our example…or maybe we can learn from theirs.  

GRANDPAUSE: “The time is always right to do what is right.” — Martin Luther King, Jr