Sorting Through the Seasons
In the Northeast, we experience each of the four seasons vividly. The bright light of spring celebrates newness and agricultural life for which the summer sun and summer rains call us to cultivate. Then the cool, crisp colors of fall invite us to harvest before the cold hand of winter tightens its grip. And just as we begin to consider an escape for survival, winter again is softened by spring. Such are the seasons in all their glory — ever-changing transitions.
With slightly less grace and far less forecast, we observe the ever-changing transitions in our own lives and call them seasons — a recent reflection from the treasured work of Richard Blackaby, The Seasons of God. While this is most often when we’re clawing for hope by trusting that our situation is temporary, there is a deeper reality in the metaphor. We experience the bright joys of new life, the summer strides of work well done, the resulting fruits of wise investments and the quiet cold of isolation or departure. These seasons of life, though, are not as neatly packaged or predicted as the seasons outside our windows.
For the Parks family, we’re nestled somewhere between winter’s isolation and spring’s celebration. Kate, the kids and I are in the throes of relocation. And while we’re fully convinced and committed to this calling, we’re also daily exposed to the reality of its cost. We’re saying goodbye to forty-one years of community, geography, stability and predictability. And we’re saying hello to all things new.
It’s from within this seasonal shift that I’ve found I’m not a spring or winter kind of guy. If I had my preference, I’d live in an eternal autumn where football just happens to be perpetually played. In fact, I’m finding the spring-like newness of this season is disrupting my routines and I’m feeling very much on the wrong side of the seasonal circuit. Yet I’m also finding that God uses these interruptions as invitations.
The meditation of my heart has centered on Proverbs 2. In verses 1-5, I find an encouragement to store up:
My son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, listening closely to wisdom and directing your heart to understanding; furthermore, if you call out to insight and lift your voice to understanding, if you seek it like silver and search for it like hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and discover the knowledge of God.
This encouragement to store up hinges on what God stores up in verses 6-7.
For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding. He stores up success for the upright; He is a shield for those who live with integrity.
The interruption of my routine invites me to seek the wisdom and stability found in Him alone. Just as the sunrise keeps its rhythm through winter, spring, summer and fall, so my relationship with God graces and grounds my life as I sort through the seasons.
I’d love to know — what season does God have you in?
