The View From the Window

It has been said that our house on the farm is in the middle of a hayfield.  To some degree, it is true.  Out windows on three sides of the house can be seen hayfields and the fourth side gives a view of the pasture where the cows roam.  So, regardless of the perspective taken, the hayfield is always in view.  One thing which struck me as a new thought the other day is that the hayfield is always changing.  It may seem the same for a span of time, but it is always changing. 

In these days the view out the window shows a field which has all but turned brown.  Soon it will be completely brown as the grass settles into a dormant time of waiting for Spring.  Sometime before winter turns lose of its hold, flowering winter weeds will begin to spread across the brown landscape.  As the days warm the weeds wither and the green grass begins to appear.  By midsummer the grass is lush green, full of life, knee deep, and waiting for the cutting and the baling.  When the bales are rolled, the ground is once again brown and all seems dead, but life is still lurking in the ground. The green will come again with another crop of grass to be turned into hay.  And, so it goes.  Always changing. 

 

So, it goes with our life as well.  The changing hayfields speak a word about this dimension of life that is a part of the life of everyone of us.  As a younger man with what seemed to be a hundred years ahead, life could easily be compartmentalized into the four seasons of the calendar.  As an older man I have come to understand that life is full of seasons, some of them show up once, and some seem to come again and again in the years allotted to us.  The green years are not just the younger years.  Sometimes even the gray haired ones are blessed with a greening season of productivity.  The seasons that God gives to us are not always measured as we measure them on the calendar.  Like the hayfields, we are always changing and as He does with the grass which grows, God is always faithful.