“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…”
Ecclesiastes 3:1 (KJV)
We all completely missed Spring in 2020. Oh, we had pollen on our cars and Spring flowers. But do you recall the empty streets and sidewalks; the shuttered churches and restaurants and stores. I think that is one – but just one, you understand – of the reasons I’m enjoying Spring 2021 so.
In retrospect, I realize that I’ve missed Spring since 2017. Allow me to explain: my wife Sally’s brain cancer was diagnosed in April of 2018; and there the journey began. We went through a 10-month season of Winter: cold and gray and grim and unrelenting. Spring never appeared that year. No beautiful colors, no multiple shades of green, no cloudless blue skies, no flowers – except those on her grave. And then COVID-19!
It occurs to me that our Father allows us seasons of life, and He has told us so. And we all have experienced our seasons of hardship and grief. In fact, we all have Winters, don’t we? Shakespeare noted such in the opening soliloquy of his epic Richard III: “Now is the winter of our discontent.” None of us has to ask what that means. Winters are long and grim and seem to hang on forever. We feel cold and dark and we long for the new life promised by the change of seasons.
Ask yourself, “Why? Why do our seasons change?” The answer: God is sovereign, He loves us and He’s on His throne! He knows that we need changes of seasons to view His glory, to understand His love for us and to renew our faith. He has created, as Solomon said, “a time to every purpose under heaven.”
Spring will come – He has promised. I can write this now because I am finally moving on from my own long Winter of discontent, toward a Spring of newness. Joy is again a part of my vocabulary. Indeed, He has appointed a “time to every purpose under heaven,” has He not? How blessed I am!
