What is your favorite season? Don’t limit yourself to weather seasons like summer or fall. If you’re a sports fan, you might say that your favorite season is football season. Or your favorite season may be Girl Scout Cookie season. Or maybe even Hallmark movie season.
My favorite season is fall because it’s the start of school and I’ve always loved going to back to school. There was just something special about finding my desk, having a clean notebook, getting all of my books, and meeting new people on the first day of school. Fall is also a great time for sports fans–I love football season, basketball season, and the end of baseball season.
Just like we experience weather seasons, we also go through spiritual seasons. Ecclesiastes 3 explains it well.
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 to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (NRSV)
Seasons are are points in our lives that are temporal. They’re not permanent. What makes seasons so interesting is their contrast with an eternal God. Within the biblical text, we are presented with a Creator that is often talked about as having more of a sense of permanence.
God doesn’t change. God’s love is everlasting. God’s pursuit of justice and God’s will persists throughout time regardless of the seasons. And I find God’s permanence incredibly encouraging.
As we move through life, we have seasons of ups and downs, of challenge, of flourishing, of lack, but in the midst of all of that, there is still persistent evidence that God remains faithful. No matter what season we find ourselves in, the things that God is concerned about are still true. So God’s concern for the poor and God’s concern for the marginalized, is something that exists across our seasons.
And God’s love for you, God’s desire for you to be fulfilled is persistent regardless of the season that you find yourself in.
Changing with the Seasons
The way we show up in different seasons changes. My wife and I love to say that you have to discern the season and dress accordingly.
There are certain actions and activities that you take in specific seasons of your life that make total sense because they match the season. But if you take that same activity and put it in a different season, you look silly. For example, if you’re in a swimming pool and you’re swinging your arms, it looks great, but if you just lay on the grass and you do that same swimming motion, it looks silly. Those are the right actions for swimming, but this is the wrong season and the wrong environment for the activity.
This text in Ecclesiastes reminds us that we have to evolve from season to season. And at the same time, God remains the same. God’s persistent love for us endures across time and seasons. As we change, we can find joy and rest in the truth that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Closing Prayer
Dear Lord, we thank you for this moment and for your consistent and persistent love that pursues us despite the seasons in which we find ourselves. And then we thank you for the opportunity to be a part of how your love is showing up in the world.
Lord I pray that you will give us the strength, the courage, and the wisdom on how we are to show up. Help us to be the best representation of your love in whatever season we are in. Help us to lay down things that might be old tools and to pick up new tools so that we can better represent and fulfill your purpose on this earth. Amen.
