A season for everything and how we should respond.

Yesterday, I read Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 NIV;

Comforted by this passage, I somehow understand, as we move through the seasons of summer to fall, we also transition through seasons of our lives. Today, I flip my calendar and smile, as it reads, “There is a time for everything.”  God often reminds me of lessons I have yet to learn. I embrace the one at hand.

There is a season for everything.

As a summertime girl, it is hard for me to let go of sunshine, warm temps and the lure of the lake. As the temperatures this year began to drop earlier than normal, I caught myself resisting the next season. I thought by not giving into the change, I somehow could delay it. How silly is that? When this didn’t work, I began begging God to give me one more warm day. Bargaining for one last boat ride of the season. I even had a little temper-tantrum in the privacy of my own mind. All my efforts did not stop summer from ending.

What I realized was our lives move through seasons as well. Looking back over my life, I see times of plenty and times of lack. Seasons of sickness and loss often followed by times of health, peace and thanksgiving. Sometimes, I have been forced to let go of things. Only to realize the loss made room for new and unexpected things.

Here is the lesson; with every change, we have a choice. We can resist or we can embrace.

With every change, we have a choice. 

Parker Palmer says, in his book, Let Your Life Speak,

“Autumn is a season of great beauty, but it is also a season of decline: the days grow shorter, the light is suffused, and summer’s abundance decays toward winter’s death… In my own experience of autumn, I am rarely aware that seeds are being planted… But as I explore autumn’s paradox of dying and seeding, I feel the power of metaphor. In the autumnal events of my own experience, I am easily fixated on surface appearances — on the decline of meaning, the decay of relationships, the death of a work. And yet if I look more deeply, I may see the myriad possibilities being planted to bear fruit in some season.

In retrospect, I can see in my own life what I could not see at the time — how the job I lost helped me find work I needed to do, how the “road closed” sign turned me toward terrain I needed to travel, how losses that felt irredeemable forced me to discern meanings I needed to know. On the surface it seemed that life was lessening, but silently and lavishly the seeds of new life were always being sown.”

“There is a right time for everything.” -The Living Bible

The truth is, there is not just a time for everything but there is a RIGHT time for everything. As humans, we think we know what is best and what is not in any given situation. But we do not. Only God knows.

Proverbs 16 says,