I thought our reaers might a little of Charles Bridgfes.

 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance. Charles Bridges has some excellent comments on this text. 

   There is obviously a repetition with increasing emphasis. The mourning is the most poignant weeping. The dancing expresses not only the laughter of the lips, but exuberant excitement of the whole man. These are God’s times. Beware of changing them. It is a fearful thing to respond with “joy and gladness” when the Lord of hosts calls for weeping and mourning. 

   Who has not found the time to weep and mourn? “Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.” (Job 5:7; 14:1) And yet lesson after lesson is needed to make us know the world is a vale of tears. We look around to the right or to the leftto avoid this or that trouble. Is not this looking our for some bye-path from the road, where we shall neither meet neither promises, comfort, nor guidance. Be content with thine appointed lot. The tears of the child of God have more the element of happiness than the laughter of the ungodly. The darkest side of the Canaan road is brighter than the light of a thousand worlds. Yet we may look for a change os seasons in God’s best and fittest time. “Thou hast turned my mourning into dancing  was the experience of the man of God. Into Job’s bosom was poured a portion “double for all his sorrows.” The mouths pf the returning captives were filled with laughter, and their tongue with singing (Psalm 136:1,2). 

   Let God’s afflicted ones mark the wisdom and grace of these appointments. He giveth both these times in their season. Yea  he maketh the one to spring out of the other. “Joy” is the harvest of the seed-time of tears. “I will make them rejoice”  so runs the promise  “from their sorrow.”  The sorrow may not “for the present” seem )Heb. 12:11) acceptable to us. But let it be accepted by us. As time rolls on, the special ends of the divine love in the sorrow will be displayed in beauteous arrangement. And that which in the beginning was accepted in dutiful acquiescence, will afterward become acceptable matter for adoring praise. The child of God will acknowledge  ‘It may be a dark dispensation. But I know it is a wise one. It brings God to me, and I am happy.’

            But far from us be that anomaly in religion  the gloomy religionist. Truly he is a stumbling block to the world, and a discouragement to the saint. He who lives, as if he were afraid of being happy  as if he doubted his right to be so  as if God begrudged him his happiness. With perverse ingenuity he believes he Gospel to be true for others, not for himself. ‘Look up and be cheerful; honor God and his Gospel’  was the wise counsel given one of this class. Take the balances of the sanctuary. Compare the moment of the night-weeping with the eternity of the morning joy. The vicissitudes of weeping and joy will soon be overwhelmed in one unmingled eternity of joy. This is the only world where sickness, sorrow, and death can enter. And the world of health and joy and life  without sin  without change  without tears (Rev. 21:4)  is near at hand. Oh! let it be in constant view  and him with it, who, ‘when he overcome the sharpness of death, opened this kingdom to all believers.  From: Ecclesiastes, by Charles Bridges, Banner of Truth, Reprinted 1981.
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