Seasons

When I left the Sunday to Sunday preaching for the farm almost ten years ago and entered into that land called "retirement" I spoke of it as the final season of my life.  I suppose what I was speaking mainly about was what I figured would be my last move.  More years were in the rear view mirror than I would ever see through the front windshield so it just seemed like an appropriate word for the moment.  However, since getting into that land and learning to live in it, the final season mentality has been replaced by a different understanding of the seasons of our life.

 

Ecclesiastes 3:3 says, "For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under the heavens..."  It is the second part of that verse which has really taken on a different meaning in these past years.  Instead of thinking of these years as the season of the final years, I have come to see them as the season for listening, the season for paying attention, the season for living more slowly, and the season for finding a new awareness of how God makes Himself known in our lives.  In some ways it seems that I have never  before lived in these seasons which some time ago seemed to belong more to the leftover part of life instead of the main part of it.

Something often heard through the years has been the phrase, "God is not through with me yet" and indeed such is true for anyone of us who continues to walk this earth and breathe its air.  What the Spirit is seeking to do in our life is to bring our heart to a place where it more clearly reflects the very heart of Christ.  He is working in us to bring the image and spirit of Christ into the world through us.  There ought never be for us an inner sense that we have arrived, but always an inner sense of gratitude that God is continuing to shape us from within through the power of His abiding Spirit.