A Time to Plant

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Ecclesiastes 3:11

            It feels strange to me to start writing this, if I’m honest. I’m always hesitant to believe that my thoughts are worth reading, and to post this up here seems to be a big, bright, bold claim of “My thoughts are important thoughts! In fact, they’re the most important thoughts!” Shockingly, that’s not a claim I’d like to make.

            However, it has occurred to me over the past few months that my thoughts are no more than my story, and my story is no more than a litany of my mistakes and heartbreaks and shortcomings intervened in and transformed by God. When viewed through that lens, writing down what has been running through my mind seems a little less crazy. In other words, my thoughts aren’t important, but God’s story is. Every remotely meaningful thought I have is a gift I have been given: a work of God’s I have been invited to bear witness to and joyfully report on.

            With that in mind, I humbly submit the following posts to you, whoever is reading this, as no more and also no less than my best effort at accounting for the work God has done for me and through me. With all prayer and gratitude, it is my hope that God might allow these words to do some good work and to have some meaning or encouragement or recognition, to you.

            Few would deny that this year has been a hard one. For me, personally, it has been a time of strain—on my plans, on my relationships, and even on my old conception of myself. Over the past months, I have felt increasingly unsettled, as I experienced some relational ties fray and some dearly held plans fail. More and more I feel restless, uncomfortable in my old self and my old path.

            But, in the midst of this, I feel something new beginning to grow. The author of Ecclesiastes writes, “There is a time for everything.” I firmly believe that, as we begin to feel unsettled, we are truly being prepared for the next thing that God has for us to do. And, I believe also, that “[God] has made everything beautiful in its time.” Or, in other words, that the aforementioned “next thing” will take all the restlessness, all the pain, and all the strain of the old season and repurpose it for good, in its time.

            This, friends, is what I hope the words that come over the next few weeks can do: that they can make use of all my restlessness and strain and use them for good—maybe just for my own good, and maybe, I hesitantly hope, for a little bit of good for you.

            Thank you for reading.

            Sending you all love and prayer and good vibes,

  Molly Kate Hance