To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)
If you live in North Carolina for very long you quickly realize that life is defined by two seasons. The first is basketball season. To be more precise, ACC basketball season. The second of the two seasons – at least where I lived in Wake County – is tobacco season. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. For four years I marked the season by seeing Richard Jenks on his John Deere tractor, plowing the field across the street from my house.
To my distant and citified observations, tobacco farming was a seasonal endeavor marked by planting (settin’ out) and harvest (putin’ in). I assumed that tobacco growers worked hard in spring and late summer /fall, recuperating from their labor in the cold months. I learned differently when Donny Olive showed me the greenhouse on his farm that sheltered thousands of tiny tobacco plants and supplied growers throughout the state.
Beneath a massive canopy was an expansive array of small plastic trays with little square compartments like the ones you used in the days before ice makers in your freezer. Each little compartment held a tiny tobacco plant, no bigger than the end of my little finger. These plants were carefully nurtured, watered on a schedule, never allowed to get too cold. It became clear to me that the success of what happened in the spring and summer depended upon the success of preparations made in winter. One season was integrally connected to the other and the “tobacco season” was actually happening all the time.
Chances are, the season you’re in right now doesn’t stand alone. If you know joy now, you may know it well because you’ve tasted sorrow. If you’re feeling smothered by sorrow now, past joy may be what you cling to as a source of hope for your future. What’s more – God works year ‘round, and the season you’re in today may well be preparation for a season yet to come, a season not yet available to your imagination.
Here are two questions for you to ponder today: can you identify a past season that somehow prepared you for where you are today? Further, can you see that the present season may in fact be God’s way of preparing you for a season yet to come?
Prayer: Merciful God, I’m thankful that you are always working and that you are faithful in every season of my life. Work in me today by your Spirit to prepare me for whatever you have for me in the coming seasons of my life. Amen.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
This Season and the Next
To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)
If you live in North Carolina for very long you quickly realize that life is defined by two seasons. The first is basketball season. To be more precise, ACC basketball season. The second of the two seasons – at least where I lived in Wake County – is tobacco season. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. For four years I marked the season by seeing Richard Jenks on his John Deere tractor, plowing the field across the street from my house.
To my distant and citified observations, tobacco farming was a seasonal endeavor marked by planting (settin’ out) and harvest (putin’ in). I assumed that tobacco growers worked hard in spring and late summer /fall, recuperating from their labor in the cold months. I learned differently when Donny Olive showed me the greenhouse on his farm that sheltered thousands of tiny tobacco plants and supplied growers throughout the state.
Beneath a massive canopy was an expansive array of small plastic trays with little square compartments like the ones you used in the days before ice makers in your freezer. Each little compartment held a tiny tobacco plant, no bigger than the end of my little finger. These plants were carefully nurtured, watered on a schedule, never allowed to get too cold. It became clear to me that the success of what happened in the spring and summer depended upon the success of preparations made in winter. One season was integrally connected to the other and the “tobacco season” was actually happening all the time.
Chances are, the season you’re in right now doesn’t stand alone. If you know joy now, you may know it well because you’ve tasted sorrow. If you’re feeling smothered by sorrow now, past joy may be what you cling to as a source of hope for your future. What’s more – God works year ‘round, and the season you’re in today may well be preparation for a season yet to come, a season not yet available to your imagination.
Here are two questions for you to ponder today: can you identify a past season that somehow prepared you for where you are today? Further, can you see that the present season may in fact be God’s way of preparing you for a season yet to come?
Prayer: Merciful God, I’m thankful that you are always working and that you are faithful in every season of my life. Work in me today by your Spirit to prepare me for whatever you have for me in the coming seasons of my life. Amen.
If you live in North Carolina for very long you quickly realize that life is defined by two seasons. The first is basketball season. To be more precise, ACC basketball season. The second of the two seasons – at least where I lived in Wake County – is tobacco season. As Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to plant and a time to uproot. For four years I marked the season by seeing Richard Jenks on his John Deere tractor, plowing the field across the street from my house.
To my distant and citified observations, tobacco farming was a seasonal endeavor marked by planting (settin’ out) and harvest (putin’ in). I assumed that tobacco growers worked hard in spring and late summer /fall, recuperating from their labor in the cold months. I learned differently when Donny Olive showed me the greenhouse on his farm that sheltered thousands of tiny tobacco plants and supplied growers throughout the state.
Beneath a massive canopy was an expansive array of small plastic trays with little square compartments like the ones you used in the days before ice makers in your freezer. Each little compartment held a tiny tobacco plant, no bigger than the end of my little finger. These plants were carefully nurtured, watered on a schedule, never allowed to get too cold. It became clear to me that the success of what happened in the spring and summer depended upon the success of preparations made in winter. One season was integrally connected to the other and the “tobacco season” was actually happening all the time.
Chances are, the season you’re in right now doesn’t stand alone. If you know joy now, you may know it well because you’ve tasted sorrow. If you’re feeling smothered by sorrow now, past joy may be what you cling to as a source of hope for your future. What’s more – God works year ‘round, and the season you’re in today may well be preparation for a season yet to come, a season not yet available to your imagination.
Here are two questions for you to ponder today: can you identify a past season that somehow prepared you for where you are today? Further, can you see that the present season may in fact be God’s way of preparing you for a season yet to come?
Prayer: Merciful God, I’m thankful that you are always working and that you are faithful in every season of my life. Work in me today by your Spirit to prepare me for whatever you have for me in the coming seasons of my life. Amen.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Mingled Seasons
To everything there is a season . . . (Ecc. 3:1)
For three years I served on the chaplaincy staff of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. In the first six months of my work there I was the chaplain to the maternity area of the hospital. Whenever I would mention this to people, it usually evoked a smile along with a comment that went something like this: “How nice that you get to work in the happy part of the hospital!”
The comment was understandable. Birth is a miracle, and for most couples it ranks near the top of joy-filled, awe-inspiring moments of life. But it isn’t always this way. Sometimes the miracle of birth is mingled with financial anxieties; the presence of the new baby sometimes presses against an already fragile marriage; the celebration that brings in the entire family also opens the door to stressful dynamics that crop up when the entire family gathers in one place.
Even in the hospital, maternity involves more than a much welcomed and prayed for birth. On the sixth floor of Hoblitzelle Hospital I passed out little white New Testaments and prayed prayers of thanks for healthy babies. Down on the lowest floor of the same building was the special care nursery. There I walked into rooms where couples were reeling from words like “stillborn” or septic phrases like “failure to thrive.” Words came easier upstairs. Silence was often most fitting downstairs.
While Ecclesiastes 3 moves back and forth rhythmically between the varied seasons of life, life’s seasons don’t actually come to us that neatly. The joys and blessings are often mingled. The lines blur between birth and death, between weeping and laughing. It isn’t uncommon to be with a grieving family as they cry one moment and then laugh out loud at some memory or story. The tears call forth the laughter that in turn gives rise to more tears.
The seasons of life do not define life. If they did we’d join Solomon and conclude that life doesn’t make sense. We’re whipsawed between different kinds of experience that bring joy and sorrow. But there is a center, an anchor. The Psalmist used words like fortress, rock, foundation, stronghold. This is God. God transcends the seasons. Remember, every season is under heaven.
Prayer: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being praise his Holy name . . . praise the Lord all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103: 1, 22)
For three years I served on the chaplaincy staff of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. In the first six months of my work there I was the chaplain to the maternity area of the hospital. Whenever I would mention this to people, it usually evoked a smile along with a comment that went something like this: “How nice that you get to work in the happy part of the hospital!”
The comment was understandable. Birth is a miracle, and for most couples it ranks near the top of joy-filled, awe-inspiring moments of life. But it isn’t always this way. Sometimes the miracle of birth is mingled with financial anxieties; the presence of the new baby sometimes presses against an already fragile marriage; the celebration that brings in the entire family also opens the door to stressful dynamics that crop up when the entire family gathers in one place.
Even in the hospital, maternity involves more than a much welcomed and prayed for birth. On the sixth floor of Hoblitzelle Hospital I passed out little white New Testaments and prayed prayers of thanks for healthy babies. Down on the lowest floor of the same building was the special care nursery. There I walked into rooms where couples were reeling from words like “stillborn” or septic phrases like “failure to thrive.” Words came easier upstairs. Silence was often most fitting downstairs.
While Ecclesiastes 3 moves back and forth rhythmically between the varied seasons of life, life’s seasons don’t actually come to us that neatly. The joys and blessings are often mingled. The lines blur between birth and death, between weeping and laughing. It isn’t uncommon to be with a grieving family as they cry one moment and then laugh out loud at some memory or story. The tears call forth the laughter that in turn gives rise to more tears.
The seasons of life do not define life. If they did we’d join Solomon and conclude that life doesn’t make sense. We’re whipsawed between different kinds of experience that bring joy and sorrow. But there is a center, an anchor. The Psalmist used words like fortress, rock, foundation, stronghold. This is God. God transcends the seasons. Remember, every season is under heaven.
Prayer: “Praise the Lord, O my soul; all my inmost being praise his Holy name . . . praise the Lord all his works everywhere in his dominion. Praise the Lord, O my soul” (Psalm 103: 1, 22)
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