What does it mean that there is a time to search and a time to give up (Ecclesiastes 3:6)?

He knew when to cast away, and when to keep. "Let her alone," He said of the woman who had been upbraided for breaking the box of spikenard on Him; "she hath wrought a good work on me." But after feeding the multitudes He would say, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost."

This was observing the Divine rule, "There is a time to keep, and a time to cast away." If the prodigal service of the heart or hand in worship be no waste, the very crumbs of human food are sacred, and must not be cast away. He who vindicated the spending of 300 pence on one of these occasions, on the other would not let the fragments of three loaves be left on the ground. In His eyes, such fragments were sacred. They were the food of life, the herb of the field, which God had given to man for his life. And life is a sacred thing. God is the God of the living. "To you it shall be for meat," God has said of it, and therefore Jesus would hallow it. "The tree of the field is man's life," the law had said, and accordingly had thus prescribed to them that were under the law — "When thou shalt besiege a city a long time, in making war against it to take it, thou shalt not destroy the trees thereof by forcing an axe against them; for thou mayest eat of them, and thou shalt not cut them down to employ them in the siege: only the trees that thou knowest are not trees for meat, thou shalt destroy and cut them down" (Deut. 20). It would have been waste, it would have been profanity, to have thus abused the food of life, which was God's gift. And Jesus in like purity, in the perfectness of God's living ordinance, would not let the fragments lie on the ground. "Gather up the fragments that remain," He said, "that nothing be lost."

The same preacher whom we quoted before, says, "There is a time to keep, and a time to cast away." (Ecc. 3:6.) The Lord Jesus both kept and cast away, in the due season.

"To all is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens: 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 seek, 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 for war, and a time for peace" (vers. 1-8).

It was the simple effect of divine truth acting on her heart, now that her conscience was before God. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose, or matter, under heaven, a time to seek, and a time to lose. So she rightly felt the all-importance of the moment, not for herself only but for others. Her ordinary duty could well wait. It was nothing to her now to avoid the concourse of women at the well, for she clearly had been alone there. What were censorious tongues now? She had heard the Shepherd's voice. Had He not called her, knowing all she was and had done? She left her waterpot therefore. To know Him was the great business. Another time was equally good for the waterpot. But here was the Messiah, the Christ; and if He deigned in His compassionate love to make Himself known to her, convicted as she was, surely no sinner need despair. Without a command, as the fruit of His grace, she leaves aside what was earthly and perishing, she seeks to spread the blessed news, which filled her soul and made her forget herself and every consideration but of Christ and His goodness to such as she had been. "Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation," just expressed her new-born feelings, the activity of that life she had in Christ.

If ever in your Christian life you find anything, however good in itself, becoming a weight to you, have the moral courage to lay it aside. We want you to get the maximum of joy and blessing out of your knowledge of Christ.

People often say, "Let us not do so and so, because if you do, we shall be sorry for it afterwards." But if they said, "This is not worthy of the coming, not worthy of the kingdom," there would not be the finding of sorrow but the strength of joy in giving things up, saying, "That is of the flesh, and not something. that will shine in the glory."

Renouncing Egypt is not idleness, nor is the breaking of a box of ointment on the head of Christ waste; though we thus see, that a certain kind of reckoning among the children of men, and even at times (and that too frequent) among the saints of God, would charge these things as such. Advantages in life are surrendered, opportunities of worldly promise are not used, because the heart has understood the path of companionship with a rejected Lord.

As a matter of fact, as our resources are of course strictly limited and not unbounded like God's, therefore we have to discriminate in order that as stewards we may do the best we can with that which is our Master's.

Let us not fail to gather from this that God may call upon us to give back to Him what we may least expect; for if He bestows gifts, is it not that we should hold them in entire subjection to His will? And happy indeed is it for those who day by day hold the blessings of God in His hands, so that when He calls for them we may be at once ready to yield them up. The moment we tenaciously grasp any of God's gifts as our own they become sources of care, and expose us to the governmental dealings of God. But to hold all God's gifts so entirely in the hands of the gracious Giver, as to leave them continually at His own disposal, is the surest way of enjoying and retaining the comfort of them.