The rest of verse three says: "A time to break down, and a time to build up."

I have remodeled a bunch of houses.  Many times it involved tearing down walls that someone had put up years before--thinking their plan was perfect.  But it didn't suit me, so I got a crowbar, a sledge hammer and started tearing things down.  No problem.

But building a wall, well, I am no good at that.  I can do sheetrock and insulation.  I can paint.  But I have to hire someone to put up studs and doors--because I don't know how.  Tearing down is easier than putting up.  Tearing down doesn't require much thought or training.  Building up requires a lot.

I tore a 27 foot wall down once because I wanted it gone.  When Ken came in, he said, "Was that wall load-bearing?"  I answered, "What's load-bearing."  Luckily it wasn't.  So tearing down does require some knowledge of basic construction--and I have learned a lot through the years.

If I had been a man--back in the early fifties--I would have been a carpenter.  That line of work, or education, was not available for women.  Girls had four choices: Secretary, teacher, nurse, or wife.  We weren't allowed to take any classes in high school that I thought were interesting.  We were required to take four years of "Homemaking."  Agony.  So everything I learned about carpentry was learned on my own.  Including mistakes.

But the kind of building up I did learn about when I was growing up was about building up character.  Honesty.  Fairness.  Kindness.  Hard work.  Education.  And on, and on...  My parents were sticklers for rules of behavior.  And with their "building up" in our lives, we were warned that we never tore another person down.  Tearing someone down is a lot easier than building up their character.

The hard thing is--because we know the rules of character, and how a person of character should behave--it's easy to see what's wrong with somebody instead of what's right.   Gotta' be careful about that.  You don't want to break down something that's load bearing.