Turning of Days: Lessons From Nature, Season, and SpiritSample

Day 5: Seasons of Faithfulness

It happens every year. But every year, I still find myself waiting and wondering, expectant and watching for the signs of the changing seasons. When will summer come this year? Will the summer heat last into the fall? When will the first snowflakes show themselves? When will it finally feel like spring?

Of course, the calendar tells me that spring arrives with the vernal equinox and summer with the solstice. And if I chose, I could watch for ecological changes, tracking biological signs of change—first and last frosts, changes in light and darkness, shifts in temperatures.  But even once the season shifts, I still can’t answer this: Who tells the winter to thaw in the first place? Who says it’s time for summer heat to come? Who selects the first autumn leaf to fall? Because even though I wonder every year when the seasons will shift, I never wonder if they will. 

Who could have imagined this? What designer would have said, “I’ll set everything in motion with enough rhythm to keep things in place, but then, within this order, I’ll introduce variability”? Who would set the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens to give us astronomical seasons only to give us the winds and waters to disrupt those same seasons? Who would make a world that is tilted ever so slightly, just enough off balance that He’s needed to balance it?

Think of it, an entire cosmos designed to teach you to trust Him and Him alone. An entire cosmos designed to teach you faith.

The writer to the Hebrews describes faith this way: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” And so it is with the seasons. We plant a seed in spring because we believe it will grow in summer, and we harvest it in fall because we believe winter will come. The seasons teach us to believe in a future we cannot yet see, but the unpredictability of the seasons teaches us to trust the One who will bring it to pass. To trust the One who says, “As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” 

Now you can understand why the Scripture draws our attention to nature, why something as simple as changing seasons can fuel our worship. Worship attends the earth’s seasons, not because the earth is to be worshiped, but because seasons teach us the shape of faith. Order in variety. Stability in chaos. Trust in the unknown. So that by looking to God in heaven, we can find our footing on an ever-shifting earth. 

If you have enjoyed this 5-day experience, check out Turning of Days by Hannah Anderson . . . and start listening to the whispers of God's creation.