The moment we arrived home, chaos met us at the door. Our daughter had developed a bladder infection that invaded her kidneys. To add to the chaos, we discovered water in the basement. I had a cavity to get filled. And my wife was under pressure to submit multiple seminary papers despite having neither the time nor the mental space. Within hours, we moved from rapture to rupture.

I had plans for the summer at home with our school-age kids. There would be time set aside for reading, time for teaching some life skills and family responsibilities, and time for some summer fun.

Then, mid-July, we got a puppy.

I called it The Strand. And we were not friends. The Strand arrived unannounced on the top of my head, shiny and unwelcome among the darker occupants. I was unamused.

In this most famous passage of Ecclesiastes, Solomon (or was it The Byrds?) tells us “there is a time for everything.”