Seasons

It is Sunday morning and I am looking out my big windows at the way the sun is hitting the trees behind my house. From here you’d never know that there is a brisk snap in the air as we slide from autumn and into winter. Even as the leaves are slowly shifting from green to yellow, I am still grieving the end of summer and my daily swims out there beneath the trees.

I am becoming an expert on those particular leaves because today is my 5th day of riding this couch with a flu bug. (“Riding” is really not the right word though. That would describe movement, wouldn’t it? Moving as little as possible has been the highest goal of this last week.) The news has been talking about the “flu season”, as if God designed it to fit right in here between the fall and winter seasons.

We also have seasons in life. The young adult finding-your-feet season, the young married how-do-we-do-this-together season, the parenting life-in-the-car season, followed rather quickly by the empty-nest season, and then back to the finding-your-feet season.

Layered and interwoven through these stages of life there are the emotional and circumstantial seasons. Not enough money, not enough time, not enough patience and not enough strength or health; the negative threads are tangled up with the many positive and glittery threads of family life and fulfilling love of your community of friends.

It is the original Season Creator who is present in every single chapter of your life. God is near you in the dark moments that feel like they will never end. He is beside you in the I-don’t understand-why-this-is-happening season. His eye is on you all the way through the I’m-not-even-sure-I-believe season. His arms are around you in the middle of the it-hurts-too-much-to-hope season.

My favorite quote lives here on my laptop screen.

“It does not matter how great the pressure is.
What really matters is where the pressure lies –
Whether it comes between you and God,
Or whether it presses you
Nearer His heart.”
J Hudson Taylor

In difficult times I often ask myself the following questions. Do I get mad at God or be angry along with Him? Do I shut down my emotions or allow my tears to soak His shoulder? Do I close my eyes and ears and pretend I am alone in my sorrow or do I lament to The One who is always listening?

You do not have to understand, believe or even hope, because He is doing it all for you in the dark times and the bright. Your only task in the moment of despair is to draw near to Him. Bring your grief, your doubts, and your questions along with you. God will gather it all up, every layer, every question and every circumstance of your life. He will hold you and make it better.

“Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, YET I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation..” Habakkuk 3:17, 18