"BE JOYFUL!"

Ecclesiastes 3:10-12              (ESV)
"10 I have seen the business that GOD has given to the children of man to be busy with.
11 HE has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, HE has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what GOD has done from the beginning to the end.
12 I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live;"


The English Standard Version of the bible is easiest for me to read, so I oftentimes use it when another translation says what I am needing to hear.  Today's verse is such an occasion.  The King James Version of Ecclesiastes 3:10 reads "I have seen the TRAVAIL, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it."  The word "Travail" is defined as "painfully difficult or burdensome work; toil."

GOD "gives" us "Travail" sometimes to to mold us into the people we need to be to glorify HIM and HIS Kingdom.  "Travail" doesn't mean we are bad people, or have sinned and being punished for that sin.  Sometimes "Travail" is just preparing us to receive HIS blessings a little further down the road?

You sometimes wonder why others seemingly have a smooth life?  But you don't necessarily see all of the difficulties they experience, or will experience!  A friend of mine was a wealthy man, maybe a billionaire.  Yet he fathered and raised a child with disabilities, and then later on he developed an incurable type of cancer and died relatively young.  What is money good for when you are fighting for your life, or wanting to give good health to an offspring and you can't?

Verse 11 says "HE has made everything beautiful in its time".  Verse 12  says "...there is nothing better for them than to "BE JOYFUL"...".  HE has made everything beautiful, and we need to "BE JOYFUL" is what I need to take away from this lesson.  There may be a time of "Travail" in my life, but my desire is to "BE JOYFUL" and do good as long as I live!