Seasons

The mornings are getting cooler.  The sun sleepily rises later in the morning.  The heat of the day comes on later, doesn't rise as high and retreats with the cool of the early evening.  The season is changing, summer is past, fall is upon us and winter will not be very far behind.  You make like the change, you may pine for summer days but the season will pass nonetheless and another season will take its place.

King Solomon put it this way: "There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace" (Eccl 3:1-8).

Everything in its time and a time for everything.  We talk about seasonal jobs, seasonal clothes, seasonal activities, seasonal opportunities, etc.  The truth, however, is that everything is seasonal.  Every job is seasonal.  That season may last 40 years or four months, but it's season will come and go.  All your clothes are seasonal.  What you wore in your teens is not likely what you are wearing or would choose to wear now.  Your health is seasonal.  You use to run like the wind.  Now you run out of wind.  Everything, even your very life, is seasonal.

The thing about seasons is that each has its own pluses and minuses.  This season has one thing and the next has another.  There is something to enjoy and something to endure in each.  It's great being young and starting a family but the struggles of raising children is a little like being pecked to death by a duck.  On the other hand, being older and being able to enjoy grandchildren is a wonderful thing that isn't packed with the stress of parenting.  However, it also isn't packed with energy and the need to take those precious grand kids back home so you can rest replaces the stamina of youth.

When people say they would love to be young again, is to say that they would love to turn this season back in for the other.  But would you really?  Would you give up the wisdom you've acquired?  Would you give up the memories you cherish?  Would you give up your grandchildren?  Would you so easily give up the you that has developed over the years to become that person you once were.  I personally like my senior wrinkles better than my teenage acne.

Seasons are meant to enjoy and to cause growth through trials.  But then, thankfully, they pass on to the next with its new joys and new trials.  You've heard mothers say about their babies, "I wish you could stay like this forever."  Not really.  Not if it actually happened as it did for a next door neighbor I once had whose 50 year old son was still in diapers, could not talk or walk.  He never experienced the changes of growth beyond infancy.  She never experienced the joy and sorrows of raising a boy into manhood.  And her temporary joy of having a baby became the deep sorrow of never having a son, a grandson or relief from the never ending challenge of being totally responsible for another.

Yes, there is a sadness of changes in seasons.  There is even a condition called Seasonal Affect that causes someone to experience deep sadness moving from sunny days of summer to increasing darkness of winter.  However, to never experience seasons or change is not how we are wired.  We need the changes, we even long for them.  And the last season, when we have to leave this world behind gives us pause but it also gives us promise of that Day when the seasons of earth are traded in for the  eternal season of heaven, which contains all the blessings but none of the sorrows of our time on earth.  Jus' Say'n.