Seasons

 There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:  Ecclesiastes 3:1

I recently heard a woman named Grace Wakube Klein speak about the seasons of life. What she said rang so true, and I thought I'd pass a bit of it on to you today.

The idea of life being one of seasons is nothing new. We see from Ecclesiastes 3:1 that it isn't. Neither is labeling these seasons after the natural seasons of the earth. What I liked was what she said each season could stand for in our lives. It's this that I want to elaborate on a bit, especially since all of us are found at any given time in one of these seasons.

First, there is the Fall Season. Klein said that this is the season for "letting go." The Fall is the season where the green leaves of summer begin to turn to various beautiful colors, but eventually, the trees they hang upon release them. They let them go. So too must we, in our own Fall season, let go of things, even good things, that are keeping us rooted in one place, or so weighing us down as to choke His life from us. Things that in one way or another, hold us captive, take from us the next level of life He seeks to lead us into. If you're in your own Fall season, would you allow Him to search your heart and reveal to you what it is time, overtime for you to let go of and release to Him? The gold, red, and purple leaves of Fall are beautiful to behold, but they must be released. In the end, they all will turn brown. What are you clinging to that He has extended His hand to you and bids you place it in His hand?

The Winter season is the time of trial, loss, and pain. It is a time when all the landscape looks dying and dead. Yet that is an illusion. In truth, the Winter season of our lives is when He is most at work in our hearts. He is doing intense planting of His seeds of life, nurturing them in the midst of a world that looks grey, bleak, and dead. In the Winter season, He is at work in our pain to bring us into a deeper experience of Him. Drawing us ever closer, revealing ever deeper truths about Himself and about us. Showing us things that we would not discover in any other season. It is a season that He would not have us miss or waste. It's a season that, if we allow Him to do His work, will yield the beauty of Spring and Summer.

The Spring season is a time to act upon all that He has spoken to us through the Fall and Winter seasons. The spiritual yield that He wishes to see come forth in us can only do so through our obeying and living in the truth He showed us there. New doors to new realities have been opened. It is for us to go through them. Fresh understanding about Him, ourselves, our lives and His purpose for our lives has been given. Things we didn't see before we now see. Things that were a mystery before have now been opened to us. We begin to realize how so much that we thought was going to destroy us was used by Him to bring new and greater life to and in us. He has done a creation work within us. We have a sense that all things are new. Hope and expectation abound.

The Summer season is a time for "celebration." We celebrate because we are experiencing life as He means it to be. We celebrate because we didn't just survive the seasons, we have come to thrive in and through them. We have discovered a much deeper meaning of what abundant life is. It isn't having a wealth of "stuff," but a wealth of Him. Abundant life is a life that is overflowing with His life. We rejoice in the season of summer.

As I said, we will all travel through these seasons in our journey with Him. Let's not miss anything He has for us in any one of them. We cannot stay in any one of them, but we can gather the riches to be found in each of them. Let us not miss any of them. Don't you miss any of them. Don't waste your seasons.

Blessings,
Pastor O