Sabbath Devotional :: Changing Seasons

Photo courtesy of Aaron Burden via Unsplash license

I have been staying with my sister this weekend and watching as she expertly navigates her three young children and all that entails. There’s rarely a calm or quiet moment. If the kids are occupied, then she’s cooking or cleaning or doing any number of other tasks that needs done.

At one point, I mentioned I needed to write a devotional today, and I asked her what she thought I should write it on, and she paused and asked me who the devotional was for. I said that a lot of the audience was just like her. She paused and then gave me an insightful idea.

Then, as I tried to find a quiet moment and corner to write it, my nephew decided that was the perfect time to come play with me. The perfect time to pile me in a pillow and blanket fort so I couldn’t type or the time to come read books with me or surprise me by throwing the ball precariously toward my computer and me.

No matter that my husband was willing to play with him. He had decided a blanket fort on top of me was the perfect game to play and that it most certainly wasn’t the time to type a devotional. (Note: the whole time I wrote this was balanced between writing and being piled in blankets by him.) My best intentions kept getting waylaid by a very cute and persistently demanding toddler.

The topic she told me to write about already made a lot of sense, but more so as I tried (and kept failing) to write this devotional. As she had paused from doing the dishes to respond to my query, she mentioned the season was changing from fall to winter and that I should write about the changing of the seasons and how this is like the seasons of our life.

How sometimes we expect things from ourselves that aren’t in line with the current season we’re in. She mentioned that when we’re in summer, we don’t expect snow. And in winter, we don’t expect a sunny day on the beach. (We may wish for it, but don’t expect it.) But sometimes we expect that in our own lives.

How we will be in the summers of our lives and keep moaning about our lack of ability to produce snow. Or we are in winter and sad we can’t produce a sunny beach day. We expect more of ourselves than is feasible instead of just trying to thrive in whatever season we are in.

We feel bad we can’t dedicate more time to serving, studying, or focusing on our meetings as much as we like. Or whatever it may be.

She said that often times we fail to see the beauty in each season of our lives because we are looking for something else. Instead of focusing on all we can do, we instead focus on all the things we can’t do or feel bad for all the things we can’t. But how there’s beauty in every season, even if it’s not the season we want to be in.

It also got me thinking about how sometimes we’re happy with our current season and really don’t want the season to change. Other times, we’ve been desperately waiting for the season to change. And how this is like life and the different seasons all of us have in life.

As the season changes, it’s a good time to reflect on what we can give and do in this season and try to find joy in it. The season changes will come. That’s inevitable. And our task is to try to make the most of each season we have.