Life, I believe, comes at us in seasons. Nothing is stagnant. Change is a part of all we are, all we do. Nothing stays the same. What happened in winter doesn’t last till fall.
There’s a song on the radio as I write this that has a line something like this: The batter swings and the summer flies.
Sure seems that is the way it happened. One day I sat down in the rocker on my porch and the next, the winds were blowing cold and it was almost time to take the rocker in for the dead of winter.
It seems that it was really just a day or so ago that I was young enough to swing a bat and run like the wind. A slow wind, admittedly. The joints were flexible. Summer was fun.
Seasons change.
The summer flies.
And I’m here. Looking back.
God is there through the seasons. There’s the freshness of spring where God works to help us understand our newness in him, where the rains are sweet and we don’t mind being damp one bit.
There’s the white-hot excitement of summer where God leads us into territory with Him we never knew or dreamed of. We long for the mercy that comes with each morning. We long to grow. We want to know him, and we don’t know how to pull that off.
There’s the peace of fall, where the wind is gentle and the air is light. There is no peace, no love like God’s. We begin to understand what the relationship with Jesus really means. How do we live with daily contact with a savior who we can’t see or feel? How do we live with a relationship with the unseen?
And there is the winter of bleakness, where we struggle with death and loss, where things aren’t what we thought they would be, where that relationship we so longed for simply can’t be found.
Each step of the way, there is God. God in the days. God in the nights. God with us in our loneliness. God with us in our joys.
His footprints are easy to see, but more often than not, we see them after we’ve walked through the season.
This blog is my effort to look at all the seasons through which I’ve, those around me have passed through, in the past few years. It covers all seasons, and I suggest that it covers all persons. I will be blogging five days a week as I move from the season of the Times-Picayune to the season of full-time ministry.
There’s a song on the radio as I write this that has a line something like this: The batter swings and the summer flies.
Sure seems that is the way it happened. One day I sat down in the rocker on my porch and the next, the winds were blowing cold and it was almost time to take the rocker in for the dead of winter.
It seems that it was really just a day or so ago that I was young enough to swing a bat and run like the wind. A slow wind, admittedly. The joints were flexible. Summer was fun.
Seasons change.
The summer flies.
And I’m here. Looking back.
God is there through the seasons. There’s the freshness of spring where God works to help us understand our newness in him, where the rains are sweet and we don’t mind being damp one bit.
There’s the white-hot excitement of summer where God leads us into territory with Him we never knew or dreamed of. We long for the mercy that comes with each morning. We long to grow. We want to know him, and we don’t know how to pull that off.
There’s the peace of fall, where the wind is gentle and the air is light. There is no peace, no love like God’s. We begin to understand what the relationship with Jesus really means. How do we live with daily contact with a savior who we can’t see or feel? How do we live with a relationship with the unseen?
And there is the winter of bleakness, where we struggle with death and loss, where things aren’t what we thought they would be, where that relationship we so longed for simply can’t be found.
Each step of the way, there is God. God in the days. God in the nights. God with us in our loneliness. God with us in our joys.
His footprints are easy to see, but more often than not, we see them after we’ve walked through the season.
This blog is my effort to look at all the seasons through which I’ve, those around me have passed through, in the past few years. It covers all seasons, and I suggest that it covers all persons. I will be blogging five days a week as I move from the season of the Times-Picayune to the season of full-time ministry.
Perhaps you can find yourself in the stories, in the line at Burger King, buying a new car, having kids, grandkids. Perhaps you’ll laugh. Perhaps you’ll find insight.
Not everyone has my background, my problems, my worries, my woes. Not everyone has gone through the pain of alcoholism, lived through Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, lost love ones to cancer.
But everyone has someone or been someone who has had some problem like those in a dark time and come screaming into the sunshine of joy on the other side.
Somewhere in the balancing of the pain of life and the love of God is where we live, not as stained glass portraits but as flesh-and-blood it’s happening to me today God people.
On the porch, rocking away, watching the summer fly by.
Let me introduce you to the seasons I’ve experienced. Perhaps you’re in there with me. I suspect you are. Maybe you will laugh. Maybe you’ll recognize God in ways you never dreamed. Maybe you will recognize yourself.
Read them daily if you will, the way seasons are felt, absorbed, lived.
Feel the joy of the Lord, the dryness of a desert, or the warmth of a winter fire as I did when I wrote them over the years.
Not everyone has my background, my problems, my worries, my woes. Not everyone has gone through the pain of alcoholism, lived through Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, lost love ones to cancer.
But everyone has someone or been someone who has had some problem like those in a dark time and come screaming into the sunshine of joy on the other side.
Somewhere in the balancing of the pain of life and the love of God is where we live, not as stained glass portraits but as flesh-and-blood it’s happening to me today God people.
On the porch, rocking away, watching the summer fly by.
Let me introduce you to the seasons I’ve experienced. Perhaps you’re in there with me. I suspect you are. Maybe you will laugh. Maybe you’ll recognize God in ways you never dreamed. Maybe you will recognize yourself.
Read them daily if you will, the way seasons are felt, absorbed, lived.
Feel the joy of the Lord, the dryness of a desert, or the warmth of a winter fire as I did when I wrote them over the years.
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