Seasons Come and Seasons Go, and Then They Come Again

Yesterday I was in a funk. I think part of it was the overcast weather. Perhaps it was because it was a Monday. Later in the day, I began to think that maybe I was having a moderate case of the end-of-summer blues. This was surprising to a degree because I no longer am a teacher and so the end of summer does not signal the end of a summer off work. But I do love summer; it's my favorite season.

Last night I picked up F. LaGard Smith's Meeting God in Quiet Places: The Cotswold Parables, as I do from time to time. (Thanks to my maternal grandmother for passing her copy along to me.) I am slowly making my way through it. I tend to pick it up when I'm in need of an emotional and spiritual hug at the end of a day when I've been fretting over something or another. The next chapter I was to read was titled "Seasons." The introductory verse was Genesis 8:22: "As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease." Well, I thought, isn't God funny? This should be interesting.

And it was. The whole chapter was a reminder that there is a season for everything (credit given to Solomon in Ecclesiastes, of course), and that we must have winter to appreciate summer. Smith also reminded me that summer always comes again. God is faithful. We don't want the good times to end, Smith says. But in opposites, we begin to cherish the different characteristics of different times in life. There is a balance to life, Smith says. Everything fits.

Smith also makes an excellent point that we don't have to wait three months for the next season to roll around; God's mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:23). Smith closes the chapter with the second and sixth verses from the hymn "Abide With Me"--one of my favorites.

P.S. The Verse of the Day on Biblegateway.com is "For the LORD takes delight in his people; he crowns the humble with salvation" (Psalm 149:4). I like that. :)