Changing Seasons

With the Canadian geese filling the afternoon air with the sounds of wings beating and loud honking and the thuds of falling pecans dropping to the ground, can Fall be far away?  Even today as the sun was dropping down on the western sky, there was a breeze that almost seemed cool brushing against a shirt full of sweat from a wrestling match with a chain saw and a huge fallen limb.  Just maybe, it really is just over the edge of the horizon.  Just maybe the hold hot Summer has held for so long is being broken and the cooler days of Fall are soon to fall upon us.

 

For so long I talked about seasons by watching the liturgical calendar go from Advent, to Christmas, to Epiphany, into Lent, and Easter, and then into the long days of Pentecost.  And while I still am somewhat aware of these seasons and the significance each  brings to the life of the church, I must confess to being more captivated in these days by the changing seasons that have been ordained and in place since the beginning.  Ecclesiastes says it well as it tells us, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:  a time to be born, and a time to die, a time plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted...(Eccl. 3:1-2)  Of course, there are many more times set forth in those first eight verses of this third chapter and all of us are always living in one time, or season, or another.

 

Even as each of the four seasons of the year bring something different in the atmosphere, so do they bring forth new things for us to experience in our living.  No season is exactly like the one lived in the past.  Each one is different.  Each one brings a reminder that we are always in between sowing and reaping, being born and dying.  Life is not stagnant, but always filled with the dynamite of change.  So, we have been created to live.  God has not just thrown us into the creation to move through it, but to live midst it mindful that we are an integral part of it.  Our purpose is as unique as each changing season.