Seasons

There is a crispness in the air lately.

And it stirs me.

The end of one season and the beginning of another. A dry, hot season being replaced by the cool night air -natures refreshment.

I have been dry lately. Too many things happening -too many questions that I can't find the answers to. Too much of me and not enough focusing on Him. I find it hard sometimes to find the good in all the bad going on around me.

In the last month I have watched people around me go through seasons of change in their life. A co-worker who fought liver cancer with all he had for the last year was cleared of all active cancer cells in his liver only to have the rest of his body shut down and Him to be taken home last week.

A dear woman who was my husbands neighbor when he was growing up has been diagnosed with leukemia and told that she has maybe two months to live. This is two years after she had lost the oldest of her three daughters two years ago to breast cancer. This woman one of the most courageous people I have known and she is never without a smile on her face or a nice word to say to those around her.

Seasons.

Not only in nature but in life.

Physical life. Spiritual life.

Even in the sadness, I catch His refreshment.

We spent Sunday afternoon with the beautiful woman I mentioned above and her family. It may perhaps be the last picnic she will be able to spend with her family and friends. There were no tears- just happy recollections of memories passed. She was always a woman with many talents. She loved to paint, as did her daughter that passed away. She has not picked up a paintbrush since she lost that daughter and a project that they were working on together remains unfinished. She tells me that the spark is gone since her loss. She looks at me and simply says..."When I get to Heaven we will paint together again." To see someone who has known great loss and is in the midst of pain and sickness- she still looks forward to what is to come. To be reunited with those who have gone before her and wait patiently to help guide her into her eternal home with Jesus.

I want to be able to be that kind of person. To place my hope in what is to come and not what is going on around me.

I turned to Ecclesiates the other night when doing my evening devotions. Once again, God knew I must have needed a push. Here the author (Solomon?) resounds with the message that life is not a puzzle to be solved. It reminds us to view life as God's good gift to us, rather than to bog down in the analysis of our life and circumstances. God wants us to enjoy life and to find purpose and meaning to it. But the only way he can accomplish His purpose is when we allow Him to fill the emptiness of our searching hearts with himself.

My prayer is that he does just that for me...fill me in this season until my cup is overflowing.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8