Seasons

We are just on the threshold of Spring, roughly more than a week into it. The weather in that time ( a little more than a week mind you), has produced everything from a late snow to "sitting on your balcony and smoking pipes, or writing, or both" warmth. The seasons of nature....you gotta love them! They are a quartet of wild and crazy guys...and prove to be very unpredictable.
In my part of the country, sometimes some of the seasons don't show up. Summer all of a sudden changes to Winter. It's blistering hot one day and teeth chattering cold the next and you're scrambling to find that one box in the attic you packed your sweaters and coats in so you won't freeze to death. Unpacking that box wasn't penciled in your Daytimer "To Do" list for at least another two or three weeks. Leaving Fall out of the loop even throws the best laid plans and forecasts out of their proper symmetry.....And furthermore what happened to Fall anyway? Did Fall take the short bus to nowhere? Did he show up twice in another state? Did he forget to set his alarm clock? Maybe Fall went on a bender and was just too hungover to show up...if that's true, I know of some great support groups Fall should attend....
Another thing about these guys....you can't figure them out no matter how much you study them. I had a good friend I was stationed with in the Philippines. He was the commanding officer of the meteorological station there. He invited me to go with him one day to help him and his team launch a series of weather balloons. Along the way he gave me a "Meteorology For Dummies" lesson.....and being the "dummy" I was, I still didn't understand what he was trying to teach me about the purpose of the balloons....but I kept nodding my head with a "yes" motion and saying, "Uh huh" and "I see" as if I did. All I know is that the balloons had these transmitter devices attached to them and some measured wind currents, some measured temperatures, some measured pressures, and others measured moisture in the air, and so on and so forth. All worked together to help the experts forecast future weather patterns for the area.
I only knew one thing about weather in the Philippines, it was either hot and dry, or hot and wet. The findings of this particular launch indicated that the island of Luzon would probably not fall victim to any typhoon activity that particular season. Three weeks later the air base got hammered with one of the worst typhoons in base history and it took about seven weeks to clean up and recover in the aftermath. As I said earlier, you just can't figure these guys out! They almost come off as the mischievous imps and sprites you read about in fairy tales. How they love to confound and confuse!....and these once sharp, talented, analytical, brilliant, scientific meteorologists are broken down to wearing wrap-around white tuxedos and placed in rooms that are padded and have no sharp corners. They are to be pitied and understood, but we can do neither because we're too busy complaining about how "they" got it wrong again. Sometimes I think trying to predict what these guys are gonna do when they show up is nothing more than a crap shoot.
Seasons, they come and go, sometimes they don't show up, and sometimes I think they do what they do just to push our buttons and give us something to talk about around the water cooler at work. They break into our lives with an unpredictability that shatters our otherwise fairly ordered world.....and in the spirit of one of my personal heroes, Forrest Gump, they are like a box of chocolates....you never know what you're going to get....
In life, we go through seasons. In fact, life is nothing but a constant flow of changing seasons. Solomon agrees with that. In Ecclesiastes 3:1 he states, "For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven."-NLT Some seasons in life bring rejoicing, laughter, dancing, riches, and joy....other seasons bring grief, death, hardship, poverty, tears, and sadness. All of these seasons work together to make up the whole of our life....the whole of our existence....and these seasons of life, like the seasons of nature, are unpredictable. No matter how much we plan in one season of our life, another season shows up and destroys what we've carefully thought through.
Solomon is touted as being the wisest man who ever lived. Kings and Queens from other nations all over the known world would come and sit at his feet to hear his teaching. Yet, for all his God-given wisdom, he didn't have the ability to forecast life. He knew of its seasons and he knew the God in control of them, but he couldn't tell another how their life would turn out. He could only teach that life would happen and it would happen for a season. He knew that at times life would be easy and light, and he also knew that life would hit hard and with an unforgiving vengeance at other times.
If you have lived for awhile you have already experienced several seasons in your life both good and bad. If you are reading this, you have to this point, survived them. I don't know why but it seems for me the good seasons are shorter than the bad ones. I can only figure the reason is because in the good seasons I have a tendency to forget Who they come from. At times I have taken sole credit for the good seasons in my life as if I had something to do with it, as if in my own "brilliance" I laid an invulnerable plan that got me there, a plan so perfect even God Himself would dare not interrupt it. Perhaps this is one reason our Lord spoke of the difficulty the rich (successful) had in following Him. When it's good for me I have the foolish whim that I created that good. I want to take credit for the blessing that I made for myself. It is not only foolish thinking; it is arrogant and prideful thinking....and we all know the end result of pride.....that's right.....a fall is coming.
Bad seasons are longer for me. They are miserable and at times seem hopeless. A bad season is like living in a pit with no ladders or ropes. When the season of bad came to my doorstep, life hit hard from the blind side and my response was not turning to God, but rather to a bottle of escape. I was knocked in the pit through no desire of mine and was stuck. The only thing worse than being in a pit for a season is being in a pit for a season with a bottle of escape thinking that will help make the pit more comfortable. No matter how many L-shaped couches or Lazy Boy recliners you outfit the pit with....it doesn't stop being a pit.
I lived in a season of alcohol abuse, numb to the fact that there were lessons to be learned while going through a difficult season in my life. School was in session and I was too drunk to show up. The more I drank the deeper the pit. People got hurt, people I dearly love. I lost any sense of self-respect, there was an absence of dignity. I had a self-loathing and even for a season, a death wish I think. No hope for me, no peace, no joy, no dancing, no love, no help, nothing....it was all gone and I felt I no longer deserved those things anymore anyway. The more I despaired, the more I drank....the more I drank, the longer the season of bad. I got to the point that I was convinced I had entered a harsh winter in my life and it was here to stay.
However, when I truly came to the end of me....and you know, that's what we have to do, come to the end of us....before we can move on into the healing God offers. I came to the end of me and found God present. He was with me in the pit....in fact, He never left when I fell into it....He was always there. I take comfort in the fact that the Bible promises God never leaves us nor forsakes us. He is present always whether we feel His presence or not. In that season of bad, that pit....I found Him to be the one constant I could depend on.....he is the only constant in my life when I think about it. Circumstances change, seasons change....some are good, others are difficult; people change...some walk away, others stay; but God never leaves....whether we're up or down! He is in control too. Our seasons never blind side Him like they do us and He always knows what to do. Afterall, He's seen it all before.
I am not saying I now live in a constant state of blissful seasons. I still endure seasons in my life that bring difficulty and tests....I just don't drink over them anymore. I trust my Constant, I can count on Him...and I learn and grow....and I have clear eyes and a clear head....even living through a difficult season. Life happens, life is great at times and life sucks at other times...you can't count on life....however, you can count on God.....He never changes....He is the Constant. This is the reason the Psalmist refers to Him as a rock....He is unmovable....and when typhoons in life hit us....we can go to that Rock for shelter. You won't find that kind of security in a bottle, a needle, or from a conversation with even the best of psychologists...only in Him and Him alone.
Blessings!