A TIME TO LET GO

Ecclesiastes 3 may be familiar: "To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven, A time to be born and a time to die..." The circumstances that follow in this chapter describe life. Much of life is deals with birth and death, war and peace, laughter and sadness, and other situations. I'd like to add a further thought: "There is a time to tackle a problem and a time to let it go."

This has been made clear to me with my hearing. About fifteen years ago I began noticing a shrill ringing in my inner ears that soon grew worse. My doctor said it was tinnitus, a condition that can be caused by medication, neurological damage, infection or even heredity. All people have ringing in their ears now and then. Tinnitus is the constant, uncontrollable inner ear noise that is heard in loud environment or quiet. There are a few advertised treatments, but none remove the sound, only mask it.

Severe tinnitus usually results in hearing loss. Hearing aids help a little, but they don't reduce the inner ear sounds which may increase. There is a recorded case where tinnitus became so bad the patient asked to have some nerves severed. Surgery made the man totally deaf, but the ringing still did not stop. Imagine spending the rest of your life hearing only the ringing in your ears!

A person can know what a problem is, what causes it, or even what may happen to it in the future. But some problems never seem to go away. That's when we need to deal with them by letting them go and giving them to God. I have some methods to help with my tinnitus, but I have found giving it to God works best. "Let Go, and Let God."

As I said, "There is a time to tackle a problem and a time to let it go." There are some things in life we can do nothing about, so why spend time worrying about them? It is better to commit them to God in faith and let Him deal with them. 

I am not saying we should deny a problem exists or not try to find a solution. Perhaps someday a cure for tinnitus will be found. Meanwhile, since I can do nothing to stop it, I need to let it go and let God handle it. Some days I don't think about the ringing, but I always know it is there, and my best solution is to ignore it.

Matthew 19:26 says, "With God, all things are possible." God can fix anything, so we need to "Let Go, and Let God." If possible, we should try fixing it, but there's a time when we must "Let Go and Let God." This is especially true in dealing with people. We cannot control the behavior of others, whether in business, government or relationships, so we must stop thinking it is all up to us. It is far better to "Let Go, and Let God."

"With God, all things are possible," including healing our hearing.