Seasons

 

We've had some really interesting weather lately. It seems we have experienced nearly all the seasons since last weekend! Last Saturday our temperatures were in the 70s and we were ready to get out spring clothes and start thinking about summer. Then Sunday brought us a damp, cold, gloomy day. Since then, we have alternated between balmy sunshine with spring temperatures and bouts of cold, wind, and rain. Today is one of the “partly” days. Partly sunny or partly cloudy, depending on your point of view. Not cold, but not exactly warm either.

Seasons change. They come and go. Much like this photo, taken when we lived in the mountains of Western North Carolina. It’s a beautiful winter scene, but winter never lasts year round. Things change. It’s a part of life, and not only in a weather sense.

Consider the young man who was a star on his high school football team. Perhaps he went on to play college football. But now, some twenty or more years later, he just can't compete at the same level. He still loves the game, but his body won't cooperate any more. He's in a different season.

Perhaps as a child or adolescent or young adult, you were one of those people who could eat anything and everything, yet not gain an ounce. I was never one of those people! But even people who had that kind of metabolism when they were younger often find themselves in middle age with a "middle-age spread". It's a different season of life, and the body just doesn't respond as it once did.

Once upon a time I had a dress that I loved. To this day I still remember and love that dress, even though it's been more than twenty years since it was hanging in my closet. It had all my favorite colors in one dress, and I loved wearing it. Until I gained too much weight and it no longer fit. But I kept that dress. I kept hoping it would fit again. Eventually I realized that wasn't going to happen, and the dress found a new home in the bag of other no-longer-for-this-season items that were going to Goodwill. No matter how much I loved that dress, its season had come and gone.

Life is filled with seasons. Seasons for athletics. Or food. Or certain clothing. Seasons related to age. Infant to toddler to adolescent to teen. Young adult, then parent, then grandparent. The cycle of seasons takes you from young adult to becoming a parent, and the infant-toddler-adolescent-teen season progresses to your infant growing up and eventually becoming the parent of an infant, and on and on and on it goes.

These seasons of life involve growth and change. Physically. Mentally. And spiritually, as well.

Have you ever stopped to think about the seasons of your life? Not so much the seasons of physical life, although we can't really avoid thinking about that when we look in the mirror each day. The marks of our maturing are evident on our faces.

Spiritual maturity may not be quite so evident. But it is just as important. Perhaps more so. We don't want to stay in the same season forever, but rather our desire should be to continue moving forward, progressing on to ever increasing maturity in our spiritual lives.

If we give birth to a child who always remains a child, who always drinks milk from a bottle, who never learns to feed himself, then we realize there is a problem. And the same is true in the spiritual sense.  

An infant who remains an infant is not healthy. Neither is it healthy for us to remain infants in the spiritual sense. We need to move forward, from season to season, moving toward maturity.

Are you stuck in a season today?

One of the best ways to get unstuck is to spend time with the Lord. Talk to Him. Spend time in His Word. Ask Him to help you.

And He will.

"Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation."  (1 Peter 2:2 NASB)