“To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: …A time to gain, And a time to lose…”
Ecclesiastes 3:1, 6
“Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Philippians 4:11-13
Somewhere I picked up this idea that life was to be a constant upward trajectory in all things. That idea was confirmed as I have listened to much contemporary preaching in my circles that if I served God my life and circumstances were somehow assured of being a non-stop ride to success and abundancy. I understood that the early years of my life might be meager and struggling, but as I moved along through life there was this pseudo-optimism that I would never face lack or resistance. There is an appropriate biblical optimism to be sure, but for many any glitch in their sense of convenience or trajectory of success is a gut-punch. For some, they toss in the towel and quit the journey. I have been reading an increase of stories concerning millennials, in particular, who are jumping off the ship of Christianity and deconstructing their faith. They can paint the reasons any way they wish for that decision, but the irreducible reason for it is disappointment. Something didn’t fit into their paradigm of expectations and it left them disappointed and jaded. I don’t judge them (in the contemporary sense of the word), in fact, there have been times I have battled those same pesky thoughts. The difference, I think, in how I handled those moments was a clear understanding of the totality of what the Bible promised.