PrintThe Seasons of Life
This morning I rather casually visited two of my favourite devotional websites. Both of them – independently and without collusion - were focused on one thought; the seasons of life. This emphasis is so timely for me. I find myself sometimes quietly wondering about (and sometimes actually struggling with) the changes Bev and I are facing together in this season called retirement – or, as I prefer to call it, re-focusing.
One of my sources made this point this morning:
Each year we experience the changing seasons -- Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Their order has never been altered, nor has the cycle of their turnings ever been interrupted. Year after year it is always the same. While their intensity may ebb or flow, their time remains set and unchanging………In Nature, winter is a time when darkness extends its rule of the clock; days are shorter and nights are longer. Cold trumps warmth, pleasures recede and harsh realities advance; toughness is rewarded, while that which is frail and soft is all but doomed.
With that reminder still lingering in my mind and heart, I turned to my other source. As I listened, I again encountered this theme of changing seasons. I was reminded that, in John 15, Jesus talks about the pruning of the grapevines. The point was made that it is the fruitful vine or branch that is pruned after a season of growth and fruitfulness. The goal of the pruning is greater fruitfulness when the next season of fruitfulness comes around.
There were a number of truths that wrapped themselves around my heart this morning but the one in particular that stood head and shoulders above the others was that winter is no less a part in the seasons of nature than the other three – spring, summer and autumn. In nature we can't expect or wish that all of life is one long spring or summer or autumn.
Neither can we have the same expectation in the seasons of our individual lives. The rhythm of life requires the consistency of the seasons (including winter) if our lives are to be fruitful – increasingly fruitful. In John 15 Jesus refers to a sequence of increase when He talks about "fruit…more fruit…much fruit". And that increasing productivity is dependent on two realities – the experience of winter (as well as the other three seasons) and the pruning knife finding its mark.
