I’m currently reading The Seasons of God by Richard Blackaby. I’ll give a full summary when I’m finished, but I wanted to touch briefly on this idea of seasons and what it means to live with a seasonal perspective.
While not every part of the world experiences the seasons in the exact same way, we do experience four different seasons. They are winter, spring, summer, and fall. As nature experiences changes of seasons, so do our lives.
Winter – This is a time for rest. A time after finishing something. A time to prepare. To create a vision. To plan. This season can sound empty and barren but it’s full of dreams and goals and mental preparation for what’s to come.
Spring – This is the season for planting. This is the time of newness and birth. For turning the ideas you had in winter into seeds to be sewn in spring. This is where it pays well to be intentional with what you sow. To invest in good things and to create rhythms. To take the dreams you had in winter and break them down into small steps that can be started in spring.
Summer – After spring is summer. When the seeds are sewn, they need to be taken care of. They need nutrients and water and good soil. The weeds around them need to be pulled. This is tiring work. This is long days and potential long nights of continual cultivation. This is the season of sweat and labor and toiling in the fields to make things happen. What’s dreamed of in winter, becomes a seed in spring, and grows in summer. You can’t harvest in the fall what wasn’t nurtured in the summer.
Fall – This is the time of harvest. Of Thanksgiving. Of reaping what was sewn. Of bounty and of plenty as long as the work was done in spring in summer. This is the season of peaks and pinnacles and of finishing hard things. It’s celebrations and joy of what you have to show for the work that was done. It’s also the season before winter.
Every season follows a sequence. You can’t skip seasons. Just like you can’t rush seasons. They are here for a time, and when the time is right, they will change.
Ecclesiastes 3 speaks of this seasonal perspective.
A Time for Everything
3 There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
2 a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
3 a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
4 a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
7 a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
8 a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.
9 What do workers gain from their toil? 10 I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race. 11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. 12 I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. 13 That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God. 14 I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that people will fear him.
There’s a lot to unpack here and dig into which is why I’d recommend reading The Seasons of God by Blackaby. He digs into it for you and shares how you can live with a seasonal perspective.
We’ll dig further into the seasons in future blog posts but for now, I want to encourage you in this – Embrace whatever season you’re in. It will end. And the next will come. You should be expectant of the next season while also savoring the on you’re in. The seasons will continue to change as our lives continue to change. Remain expectant.
