A Season for All Things

 

 

(Read:  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8)

 

There is a season for everything…

 

I have been thinking a lot about seasons this week.  This weekend Andra and I will be dropping off Emily, our younger daughter, at college.  It marks both an end and a beginning, for her and for us.  It holds joy and sadness, anticipation, and nostalgia.  This is what God entrusted us with this child for in the first place, to help her grow into the woman God made her to be, to step out courageously when the time would eventually come.  Still, I find myself this week thinking back to when she was just a baby, a toddler, a new teenager, wondering how the time passed so quickly.  I think what I am experiencing is a changing of life’s seasons.

 

We are made for seasons, all of creation is.  That is the way that God ordered the universe.  We feel it as we move from the gentle and birthing days of spring, to the long, hot, growing days of summer, to the gathering and ever so slow, and beautiful, death that comes with autumn; to the dormant and often harsh days of winter, only to cycle back to the newness of spring.  Obviously, depending on location, one feels the change of seasons more distinctly in some places than others. Even in the warmth of south Florida, one can still feel the subtle changes in the air.  

 

These seasons of creation remind us of seasons in other parts of life, too.  Time moves on from season to season.  People age, jobs change, families move to new cities, children leave for college.  There are days of grief when a loved one dies, and days of rebirth when we learn to live in new ways on the other side of that sadness.  

 

The change of seasons in life often brings nostalgia and anxiety, particularly if the previous season was a particularly good one.  In those cases, something in us would prefer the seasons pause and let us just sit a while, perhaps for a long time.  In other seasons, especially difficult ones, the change brings hope and the potential for re-birth.  In both cases, we move beyond what was into something new.  

 

The reading above from Ecclesiastes remind us of this seasonal nature of life.  There is a time for things to begin and end, to build up and to tear down, to laugh and to cry, a time to hold on and a time to let go.  It is inferred in this passage that we will find contentment as we make peace with the seasonal nature of life and try our best to live faithfully into the appropriate moments, seasons.  It is also inferred that we move through seasons in the care of a faithful and loving God.  We are not alone.  

 

What season do you find yourself in right now?  Spend some time today thinking about this question.  What is ending?  What is beginning?  What would you love to hold onto for a long time?  What is God asking you to gently let go of?

 

In the United Methodist Hymnal, there is a beautiful modern hymn called, Hymn of Promise, by Natalie Sleeth.  She wrote this hymn while her husband was experiencing a life-threatening form of cancer.  He asked that the hymn be sung at his funeral.  The third stanza proclaims:

 

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity; in our doubt there is believing; in our life eternity.  In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

 

Hymn of Promise captures the seasonal nature of life, but also the promise that we are not alone, and that God can be trusted.   We don’t have to be afraid or give into nostalgia or despair.  We are in the hands of a good God who wants to usher us through life’s many changes, for, in the cold and snow of winter, there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season…something God alone can see.  (from v.1)