Seasons Come and Go

One of the things learned and appreciated in the years of retirement is the awareness of changing seasons.  What I have discovered is that there are more than the four seasons reflected by the turning of calendar pages.  What has also grown within me is the way God brings us into different seasons of our life.  I once thought life could not be lived without preaching, but these year have become a surprising season of writing.  It has been a season empty of church work and filled with farm work.  It has been a season of care giving, a season of grief, and a season of new beginnings.  It has been a season of understanding and experiencing God in new and different ways.    

It is that way with all of us.  Life changes and brings us into times in our life with which we can fight, or times which we can embrace.  The thing which always need to be remembered is that God is the One who brings us into different seasons of our life.  Some may be as difficult as a bitterly cold and windy winter day.  We may wish we could forget them and, then again, there are seasons full of life and hope and joy that we would choose to last forever.  The point is that regardless of the circumstances of our life, God is with us.  God has not pushed us out there on the road and stepped back to see how it goes for us, but He walks the road with us and has, in fact, prepared the way that is ahead.  

There are surely times when we may feel as deserted by the Father God as Jesus might have have felt on the cross, but the truth is that such moments do not exist.  Whether the season is easy or hard, God is with us.  It is one of the central truths of the gospel message.  God is with us.  We are never really alone.  He is with us.  Even though we go through the season known as "valley of the shadow of death..." (Psalm 23), God is with us.  In a few days we will gather at the empty tomb and shout this truth with all the people of God.  I cannot wait!