“For everything, there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. ’’ Ecclesiastes 3:1

Last year many people asked me How do I manage to live without a Job for more than a year and do not even mind at all about it? The answer I gave to them is that I have learned early from the Bible that man's life is subdivided into seasons, and I would like to share such a lesson with you.

When we read the Bible in the passage of Matthew 25:1-13, there is no doubt that the main lesson we can learn from that parable is to be ready for the coming of Jesus at any moment. However, I believe that we can also learn how to navigate the seasons of life from that parable.

The parable is about ten virgin women who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom and the passage describes five of them as wise and five of them as foolish. Anyone paying close attention to the passage may notice that the difference between the wise and the foolish comes from the fact that the foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them but the wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. This means the wise have anticipated the possibility that their oil could finish before the coming of the bridegroom and kept some reserve while the foolish did not do so. Furthermore, another passage that can also help us navigate seasons of life is the passage of Genesis 41 where Joseph has anticipated the possibility of seven years of famine in Egypt from the dream of Pharaoh and decided to make some reserve for the future. ‘’During the seven plentiful years the earth produced abundantly, and Joseph gathered up all the food, which occurred in the land of Egypt, and Joseph stored up grain in great abundance’’ (Genesis 41:47-49). After the seven plentiful years, the famine started, and Joseph opened all the storehouses and sold grain to the Egyptians (Genesis 41:56).

The key element that separates Joseph and the wise women from the foolish women is Wisdom. As Christians, we must pray for God to keep us away from famine but, I also believe that we should ask Him to give us the wisdom necessary to manage anything he gives us because the life of no servant of God in the Bible was linear.