ecclesiastes 3:1-8:

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.

i was going to write this long post about one of my pet peeves, and then i deleted it because i realized i didn't want to say something that i didn't want to say, and then i realized that there were some things that i wanted to say (somewhere else) and then i was going to write a long post about how sometimes there is a time when you must speak and other times there are times when you must not speak and then i realized that the Bible says it much better than me.

the older i get, the more wisdom i see in this scripture.  whether you have particular religious beliefs or not, i don't think you can really doubt or question the validity of the ideas expressed here. so much of life, i think, is learning the right time. 

as a young teenager, i used to see this set of scriptures as the ultimate hopeful promise: that there would be all of these times in my life, that i would have all that i wanted and more, that it just needed to be in the right time and in the right way. 

now, as a (youngish?) adult, i see this set of scriptures much more as a way of life, of learning balance.  i could exercise my close reading skills, and talk about how even the structure of these ideas are balanced grammatically, but suffice it to say that right now, in my life, i see it as the ultimate scale.  for every moment of dancing, there may be a moment of sorrow. that doesn't negate or make less important the dancing or the sorrow--in fact, i think they make each other, in their complete balance, whole. 

there are times when it is right to speak and there are times when speaking is unnecessary. there are times when i feel keenly the injustice of certain actions or events, but for every one of those times i feel deeply the tender mercies bestowed upon me.

in concrete language: for every fall down the stairs there is a baby kick.  for every head cold there is a week of energetic cleaning.  for every student who seems to not care, there are 12 who are engaged.  for every unkindness, an unexpected smile; for every tear, a belly laugh from out of the blue.

to every thing there is a season. don't doubt it.

it's true.