Surprising Seasons

There was a time when the year was clearly divided into the four seasons.  Later in life as I got involved in the liturgical life of the church, I became familiar with still another listing of seasons like Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and Pentecost.  As these later years took me down a road where the calendar of the church faded from view, new seasons, seasons never really noted, have come into my life and sometimes passed at the dawning of still other moments of time.

The writer of Ecclesiastes hit the nail on the head when he wrote, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."  (Ecclesiastes 3:1)  Some times in life are remembered as seasons of loss.  Some are remembered as seasons of great joy.  Some are experienced as seasons of change.  Others are called seasons of spiritual growth, or seasons of seeking, or even seasons of rest.  Life is not quite as orderly as we would like for it to be.  It gets messy and often stays that way for longer than we would choose.  Some seasons are filled with sunshine and blue skies and others come as dark powerful storms that change the landscape of our heart. 

But, even as spring and summer and fall and winter come and go, so do the other seasons of our life.  And even as the four seasons on the calendar speak of the order of the creation, so do these seasons that we end up remembering and naming in the deep places of our heart.  As surely as God is in control during the spring and winter, so is He in control in the season of loss and the season of heartbreak.  He is the One who holds together all the messy parts of our life.  What comes surely passes through divine hands.  The plan He has for the creation includes even the smallest parts of it like each one of us.