For everything there is a season,
and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die…
a time to weep, and a time to laugh…
a time to mourn, and a time to dance…

    No, the Byrds didn’t write it in the ‘60s, Qhoheleth (this is the writer’s term of identification—Ecclesiastes 1:1) did. It’s found in our Bibles (Ecclesiastes 3:1-8). Many of us have experienced his song of time and reversal ourselves.

    Dana Quigley knows the song. Quigley had just won his first Senior PGA golf tournament in dramatic three hole sudden-death playoff. He threw his cap into the cheering crowd, hugged his wife, then was handed a cellular phone as he walked triumphantly toward the clubhouse. On the other end of the line, his brother told him their father had just passed away after a decade long battle with cancer. He collapsed alone on the grass, heartbroken in his greatest triumph.

Today is a golden moment, so use it.

    “Oh man,” he sobbed, “I didn’t do it soon enough.”

    As a parent with a child in his last year of high school, I find myself saying that often. As a child whose father died when he was just 51, I thought it often. In ministry, when people are broken, I have been convicted of this often. As the old Neil Diamond song says, “it was done too soon.”

    Time flies by us. Opportunity opens it’s door a sliver and then slams it shut. Precious moments to touch the heart are just that, a moment and then they pass into memory. Today is a golden moment, so use it. Use it as if it won’t come again, because in the background, the music is always playing… "To every season, turn, turn, turn… a time mourn, a time to laugh… a time to mourn, a time to dance." Let’s make sure we seize the moment and share the dance with those we love.