My thoughts are about changes today, changes in seasons, some happening as our tilted planet circles around the sun each year, others brought on as each year of our life comes and goes.
Summer to Autumn
I’ve been listening to the lilt of the robin lately with extra joy and a bit of sadness. Good! They’re still here. But one morning they’ll fly, beginning a long season without their song.
Looking out my window today, I notice red leaves among the green. Some are new growth on a maple tree that dares to thrive even as summer winds down.
Others are the first hints that Autumn’s breathtaking beauty is beginning.
Our August air is clear and cool today, a welcome change from the hot humid days, teasing folks who are eager for Autumn, reminding us that September will soon arrive. School has begun. Football teams are readying themselves for their own season.
In Ohio, we are blessed by four seasons, each with its own beauty, each having its own fans. And we talk about our weather, telling each other that we like it hot or we love the snow, or that we’re reluctant to see our favorite season”Fall”come because we know what will follow, dreaded Winter.
Seasons of Life
- During a casual conversation with a lovely silver-haired woman this week, she admitted that she doesn’t like to think too much about the future at her age…
- My husband shared a text message from a colleague with me one evening, explaining that she will miss a day of work to take her only child, a daughter, to college. “How can that be?” she wondered, “when she was just a little girl.”
- My Facebook page is flooded with photos of little ones heading off to kindergarten, leaving their mothers acutely aware of the passing of time. Someone’s son get a driver’s license, another gets married.
- A sweet friend told me today that she bought a few new things in anticipation of the birth of another granddaughter.
- We share the excitement of our oldest son as he begins a new job, understanding that it isn’t easy to leave the old one.
- We see our friends stepping into retirement.
These ages and stages of life are predictable, but still bring some challenges and adjustments, some letting go of the old and embracing what’s next.
Ecclesiastes 3:3-8 (The Message Bible)
There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:
A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.
Then there are those changes that surprise and even shock us in life, forcing us into a “new normal” that we did not choose.
- An active grandmother survives a serious stroke, finding herself in the care of her patient husband. They pray together for the needs of others.
- A bride’s husband suffers a stroke before their first wedding anniversary and heads down the uncertain road of recovery. He praises her for her love and strength.
- A dear friend and her husband bring her aging mother to live with them for a while, then help her into a care facility in her hometown.
- Another close friend endures the “nightmare that is cancer” until her husband of thirty years comes to the end of his life here and enters the new normal of Heaven. She joins the company of women who carry on day by day with memories and faith.
- A divorce changes the future of a friend who decides to move out of her large house into a place she can manage more easily.
- A special lady deals with her son and daughter flying far from from the nest AND a cancer diagnosis. Unthinkable.
Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties.
For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Corinthians 12:8-10
The Unchangeable
- Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psalm 139:16
- Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2
- The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. Psalm 34:17
- So that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. Hebrews 6:18
“As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat,
summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” Genesis 8:22