A time to pluck up
Every harvest is also an ending.
Good morning,
“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.”Ecclesiastes 3:1–2
We tend to read this passage as comfort. And it is. But read the second line slowly. “A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” That’s a description of harvest, and it’s not entirely gentle. To harvest is to uproot. The field you tended all summer is torn up, cut down, emptied.
Every harvest is also an ending.
This time of year, we feel that in our bodies. The light goes earlier. The trees let go of their leaves in a blaze of color, and then they’re bare. Something in us knows a season is closing, even if our calendars say the year has two months to go.
Ecclesiastes doesn’t ask us to like this. Its author is famously unsentimental. But it does ask us to recognize it: there is a time for this, too. Some things in our lives have run their course: a role, a habit, a way of being with someone. Pretending they haven’t doesn’t keep them alive. It just keeps us from gathering in what they gave us.
The scribe’s eye: Ecclesiastes almost didn’t stay in the Bible; later rabbis debated whether it belonged. That the community kept such a skeptical, honest book says something about them. They trusted readers to hold hard truths. In Jewish tradition, it’s still read during Sukkot, the autumn harvest festival.
With someone: Sit with someone you share life with, at home or at work, and ask about something that’s ready to come to a close—for you and for them.
Jacob
