On the porch, rocking away.

I'm so tired of writing this, but I have pneumonia again (still) and this time we've double-downed as I also have strep throat. I think I have two or three other things, but I'm not sure because I'm so tired to listening to doctors that I quit listening to do them. They are getting together to send me to a specialist, a thoracic doctor, which I believe I saw that movie this summer. Good flick. I like Chris Pratt.

Anyway, I have thought back towards the future, again. The question is whether this is a bump in the road or a landslide off the road around the bend of the mountain. If the former, I'm assured this will come and go. If the latter, I'm so sorry for the churches I lead and the people I attend to. If the latter, leading is the thing I won't be able to do. If the latter, well, we'll see where this takes us, won't we?

Here's my in-nutshell kind of things. 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, then,  to look at all the seasons through which I’ve, or maybe we've, looked at those around us as we've passed through the seasons together. It covers all seasons, and I suggest that it covers all persons. 

Perhaps you can find yourself in the stories, in the line at Burger King, buying a new car, having kids, grand kids. 

Not everyone has my background, my problems, my worries, my woes.

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 with the wail of 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.

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.

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.

Heck, it might even rain today, which would be borderline miraculous.