The seasons of our lives...

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven"
~ Ecclesiastes 3:1

Growing up in Indiana, I used to just love the fall. The hills and hollers would turn into a sea of red and orange. If you were to shuffle your feet while you walked, you could hear the sound of autumn as leaves crunched beneath your feet.

It's interesting how different seasons promote different memories. Although I miss those moments, for me now as an adult, the thought of fall is quickly a reminder that winter will soon follow.

Aging is a process that we all encounter. I was reminded several years ago that we are Ecclesiastical people. Our lives are marked by seasons, or chapters.

Our ability to maneuver through seasons, or situations in our lives, mark both our successes and challenges. Years of education, jobs, and the journeys as we create relationships. Autumn also reminds me of the term, "golden years," when we begin to reflect on all of these things, and prepare to enter our next journey as we die.

Choosing to end one chapter and beginning the next can be created in many things.

What's difficult for many of us is when a chapter ends abruptly, leaving us feeling like a failure because it may not have ended as we had hoped.

Sometimes those endings leave us filled with uncertainty as a new chapter begins, and the fear of failure, or unsure of how to begin again paralyzes us.

For the trees of the forest, the leaves that sprout forth in spring helps to identify the type of tree. While the green color of summer may look like the rest of the summer, the onset of autumn reveals much more. So it is with our lives until touched by God, who then reveals to us who we can truly be.

Even as the leaves are surrendered in the fall, and the onset of winter leaves the tree bare. There is always the spring that will once again cause the cycle to begin again.

God is always like that. Even while we look at a chapter in our life ending, God has the next chapter ready to be written.

To everything there is a season...

Stay in God's grip!

G. Todd Williams (c) 2020