Seasons of Life

        We are in the middle of one of the more significant seasons of the year.  It is actually a season in a season.  The current climate season is winter with its shorter darker days, colder temperatures, inside activities.  But overlaid on that is the holiday season which actually started as early as late October in the stores this year.  Everyone seems to deal with seasons in unique ways.  Some people wait with expectancy for the season to come which includes a sense of anticipation, excitement, mystery, and hope all mixed together.  For others though it is the opposite; a time of fear, anxiety, stress and dread.

 

As I am now firmly planted in the second half of life I am very aware of seasons. There are physical and cultural seasons that we all traverse but there are also the personal seasons of life; those times in our lives where we move into a job/career, geographic location, family context or financial condition and then out of the same. These seasons often have a ‘stacking’ element where they tend to compound each other.  They are subtle in how they grow upon us, we are often unaware that we are actually in a season until it is past and we look back on it.

One of the hardest things about seasons is to let them be a season.  It’s hard to let go of them.  The seasons of consolation provide rich blessings that we want to linger in and revisit.  The seasons of desolation are difficult because they bring pain, despair and devastation leaving a lasting mark on us they haunt us well after they have passed.

The ancient book of Ecclesiastes, Chapter 3 talks about seasons.

A Time for Everything

3 There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

²     a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
³     a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
⁴     a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
⁵     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
⁶     a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
⁷     a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
⁸     a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

⁹ What do workers gain from their toil? ¹⁰ I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. ¹¹ He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. ¹² I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. ¹³ That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. ¹⁴ I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.

   

At my age I have experienced most all of these thoughts.  As we look to the new year its good to reflect on the seasons of our lives