Today I am reminded that seasons come and go. Just 3 weeks ago, the autumn leaves were shining in the sun in all of their brilliance, coloring the world with a rainbow of color and the exotic smells of nut oils as the nuts fell to the ground, much to the squirrel's delight!
Today, the trees are bare, but the world is white as the first snowfall of the winter season is in progress. Most people have a love/hate relationship with snow. It can be dangerous if you are driving in it, or stuck in it. On the other hand, the clean crispness of it's blanketing causes ordinary things to become beautiful.
I am more and more aware of the seasons of life that we as humans go through. It seems that each season has it's adversities and it's blessings. Fall presented us with beauty, but that beauty also signaled a death, as the leaves breathed their last breath and fell to the ground. Winter will provide us with outdoor fun and iconic scenes but eventually the warming air will cause it to give way the buds of spring. Yet without the fall, winter could not come. Without the dormancy of winter, spring could not come. Each season is important and ordained by God.
And we also have seasons of life. When we are in a hard season, we look to the day when the season will change but when we are happy in a season, we often fight and struggle to stay in that season, even when the Lord is clearly moving us to a different one. Our tendency is to do as Lot's wife did, and look back with longing eyes, even when it becomes clear that the season we are leaving was not what we thought it was anyway. This causes us to be stuck. It's a little disturbing to know that often we can crave what has become normal over what is best, or right, or good.
For years, I was on a quest to find my "normal." It just always seemed to elude me. And with every changing season, I would look for my "new normal." But I'm learning that God is always moving and I have to be willing to move with Him. Seasons will come and go, normals will ebb and flow as the beautiful plan of God for my life unfolds. One season prepares us for the next just as the nuts of fall provide for the squirrels in winter and the winter runoff provides for the new growth in spring. The only normal to be found is in my everyday walk with the Lord.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 says:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
I will say with the Psalmist, But as for me, I trust in Thee, O Lord, I say, "Thour art my God." My times (seasons) are in Thy hands."
Today I am thankful that God has a good purpose for me in every season.
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