Seasons of Recurring Rest

Even as Spring is used as an image of birth and new beginnings, so is Winter used as an image of the end of life.  As I came to the farm for these retirement years, there has been more attentiveness to the seasons than in those earlier years when I hurried from one to another always knowing that what was now would return again.  While I no longer live with the cocky confidence that I will be around for the next Spring or Winter, neither do I live with a sense of some impending finality.   But, what has also grown within me is the awareness that Winter does not speak as much of dying as it does of resting.     

To pay attention to the Creation during these days often filled with cold temperatures, graying skies, and biting wind is to see a landscape of barren pecan trees standing like naked skeletons and brown fields which seem empty of any life giving power.  The reality is that these barren trees and brown fields have worked from Spring until the heart of Winter to produce crops of nuts and grass and hay.     Soon they will start their work again, but in this moment they rest.  

Surely, it is a needed rest, one designed by the Creator.  Maybe retirement is a season of less work, but then again, maybe the real Word of God to be heard in this moment of creation is a Word which speaks of the need we all have for recurring seasons of rest in our lives.  Like all of creation we are not meant to live in a production mode every moment of our existence.  God intended for us to know the renewing power of recurring rest in our lives.  To live well is to embrace the rest even before we retire.