Seasons Part Three

Having explored briefly the season of fragile but exciting growth in spring, the continued growth of summer...when tomatoes ripen, but so do storms brew on the horizon; we move on now to fall, autumn, and harvest.  The fruit is ready, the veggies plump, the earth yields a cornucopia of goodness.  The season of fall also brings an important transition.  The act of harvesting the seeds planted is at once both a beginning and an end.  The days of watching the slow growth give way to the food nourishing our bodies, often bracing for the bleak mid-winter around the corner.

The cooler breezes and fireworks of God's creation tell our bodies that something is happening.  Fall happens to be my most favorite time.  Of course, fall in Florida is different.  The leaves do start to change, but it is slow, more subtle and we will spend most of winter racking around our yard.  I know people up north feel very sorry for us.  But sometimes the work of harvest can be slow too.  It starts with one red tomato or apple, it can take time before we taste another.  

There is a beauty to the fall that echoes spring.  What was first planted is now harvested.  In some ways, spring and fall dance today as summer and winter dance.  The former are about beginning or endings, while summer and winter are about surviving through the extremes.  Spring and fall are about promise and results; summer and winter are about the strength to continue.  Seasons impact our spirituality.  Seasons of faith.  We need times of planting, times of waiting, times of harvesting, and times of barrenness.  We need spring, summer, fall and winter.  Sometimes, we are led to believe that we have to produce, produce, produce (always post another blog, write another sermon, make the next iphone, consume...consume...consume.)  But when we are always trying to get to the harvest of fall, we miss the profound beauty of the other seasons.  We miss the important message of tending the tiny seed, or watching for the millimeter of growth, or seeing that letting the land (and the soil of our souls) rest is good, important work too.

I continue to ponder where in my soul I find myself in these seasons.  There are new opportunities for ministry, but they feel like tiny, vulnerable seeds...not sure what will come.  There are signs of growth in other places, but very little harvest.  There are much joy and love, but also some ministries that need to take a break and deep breathe.

I pray you will let the truth of the seasons guide you in the coming days.  There is beauty in letting the land and our lives rest for awhile.  And there is a time after rest, when the snow thaws, to re-group and re-gather and begin the process again.  Every season matters, every season has truth.  So, what is the truth from the spring of your life?  Where do you sense God working?  What is growing strong, but not yet fully bringing forth fruit?  Where is the juicy apple of live running down your chin?  And where do you need to be...simple be and know God, with the implication that we are not God?

I pray those questions will rest within you and offer you more than a trace of God's grace.

Blessings ~