Transitioning the Seasons

Ecclesiastes 3:1–8
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

Three Realities About Seasons

1. Life has its seasons

Genesis 8:22
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

Nature is constantly changing (day and night, summer and winter, cold and heat), yet nature is never changing (predictable patterns).

God has created a succession of times and seasons which means our world is changing yet unchanging.

2. We can’t control life’s seasons

Scripture says there is a time for all things, but our world counters that, instead, all things can be done all the time. Most technology, for instance, has harnessed us to the lie that we can throw off the creaturely restraints of time and have access to everything always, without waiting, without stopping, and without needing to rest.
Electricity blurs the boundaries between working while it is day and sleeping while it is night. Our online life has become our timeless master, as several screens ping commands without end which we obey without question. Gyms, fuel stations, libraries, offices, and supermarkets are open 24-7 and we come to believe we can do everything all the time. There is no particular season for anything. We do what we want, when we want.

- David Gibson in “You Do Not Have Much Time”

James 4:13-14
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.

We have plans, but we don’t have control. There are limits to our powers, so we ought live with a humble dependence on God.

3. Wisdom respects the seasons; foolishness ignores the seasons.

“Many of our frustrations rise from our blindness to the change of season or to the pain or joy of them, and we struggle to adjust our expectations.”

- Zack Eswine in “Recovering Eden: The Gospel According to Ecclesiastes”

Three Keys to Transitioning the Seasons

In Genesis 31 we read the account of a season shift for Jacob when he parted ways with Laban after twenty years of service.

1. See the signs of a changing season

Genesis 31:1–3
Now Jacob heard that the sons of Laban were saying, “Jacob has taken all that was our father’s, and from what was our father’s he has gained all this wealth.” And Jacob saw that Laban did not regard him with favor as before. Then the LORD said to Jacob, “Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you.”

One sign of a season shift is that relationships that were once good, lose their ease. Ignore this and relationships can deteriorate into bitterness.

This was coupled with a prompting from the Lord to move on.

2. Make peace with your last season

In many ways, Jacob’s twenty years with Laban was hard. It was a winter, but it was a fruitful winter. He arrived empty handed and in distress, now twenty years later, he left with property, possessions, and family.

Genesis 31:4–5
So Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah into the field where his flock was and said to them, “I see that your father does not regard me with favour as he did before. But the God of my father has been with me.”

The awareness that God had been with him and had enriched him, helped Jacob make peace with his last season. Further, it enabled him to make peace with Laban.

Genesis 31:54–55
… Jacob offered a sacrifice in the hill country and called his kinsmen to eat bread. They ate bread and spent the night in the hill country. Early in the morning Laban arose and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then Laban departed and returned home.

You can’t always bring a relationship back to joy, but typically you can bring it to peace, and for Jacob & Laban, in the end it was at least semi-peaceful.

Matthew Henry
… peace and love are such valuable jewels that we can scarcely buy them too dearly.

If you leave a season disappointed with God and bitter with people, it will kill your faith and tarnish the relationships in your next season.

3. Have faith for your next season

Genesis 32:9–11
And Jacob said, “O God of my father Abraham and God of my father Isaac, O LORD who said to me, ‘Return to your country and to your kindred, that I may do you good,’ I am not worthy of the least of all the deeds of steadfast love and all the faithfulness that you have shown to your servant, for with only my staff I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps. Please deliver me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau, for I fear him, that he may come and attack me, the mothers with the children….’

As he steps into the unknown and the uncertainty, Jacob finds God is already gone ahead of him.

Genesis 32:24
And Jacob was left alone. And a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.

Corrie Ten Boom
Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

Relationships change, seasons wax and wane, but God is constant through it all.

Jeremiah 33:20-21
“This is what the LORD says: ‘If you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night, so that day and night no longer come at their appointed time, then my covenant with David my servant—and my covenant with the Levites who are priests ministering before me—can be broken and David will no longer have a descendant to reign on his throne.

As long as day and night remain, we have certainty that Jesus reigns as King and ministers as Priest on our behalf.

This knowledge doesn’t mean I’m immune to seasons, but it does mean I’m stable and confident in every season and transition.