Seasons

Seasons are just a given as we live our lives.  

We have our natural weather seasons – Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter – they require us to make certain adjustments as we go about our day while passing through one to another.  

We move through natural progressive life seasons – infant to toddler, child, teenager, young adult, mature adult, senior citizen.  

Then we have different seasons we can pass through in life after we reach adulthood (not necessarily in this order) – education, work, marriage, parenthood, learning to balance our work/family life, retirement, possibly caring for aging family members and of course, facing up to our own aging.  There can also be other seasons interspersed with some of those seasons as well, such as the death of a spouse or a divorce, possible remarriage, job/career changes, financial changes/difficulties.  

Each of these different seasons can be stressors in our life.  How we handle them can have a huge impact on our satisfaction with life in general.  The key to weathering different seasons is going to be patience.

We know that the natural weather seasons, after a period of time, automatically morph into the next.  So if you don’t care for the current weather, you just have to wait it out.  There’s little we can do about nature.

The natural life progression isn’t really in our control either.  The aging process happens whether we like it or not.  Some of those phases can be much more challenging than some of the others.  But with faith and patience we make it to the other end.

As we move into mature adulthood and potentially the other things that can occur in that season, we probably have the most challenges – the biggest tests to our life satisfaction levels.  As we confront those tests, we may have our faith challenged at an elevated level.  

As Christians we need to keep our mind focused and recognize that “God works in seasons”.*  We can pray through those challenging times and stay full of faith, but there are times we have nothing to do but wait – and that can be difficult.  God’s seasons and timing doesn’t always meld with ours.  “Faith almost always involves waiting…So we wait.  We don’t always like God’s seasons; His delays can be pretty uncomfortable.”*  But wait we must.  

If you’re going through a season right now that has you discouraged and wondering where God is and why He isn’t answering your prayers – here are some verses from God’s Word to encourage you:

“‘If you carefully obey the commands I am giving you today, and if you love the Lord your God and serve him with all your heart and soul, then he will send the rains in their proper seasons—the early and late rains—so you can bring in your harvests of grain, new wine, and olive oil. He will give you lush pastureland for your livestock, and you yourselves will have all you want to eat.’”  (Deuteronomy 11:13-15 NLT)

“The Lord will open for you His good treasure house, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand…”  (Deuteronomy 28:12a AMP)

“…Look! The farmer knows how to wait patiently for the land to produce vegetables and fruits. He cannot harvest a freshly planted seed. Instead, he waits for the early and the late showers to nourish the soil. You need this same kind of patience…”   (James 5:7b-8a VOICE)  Those early and late showers mentioned come in their appropriate season.

Keep your faith strong and remain patient – God’s seasons and His timing are perfect.

Written by Karran Martin – November 4, 2023

* Quotes from Chris Tiegreen

[Bold emphasis is mine]