We are on the cusp of a new season. Soon the air will begin to become crisp, the days will become shorter, night will get here earlier, the leaves begin to fall, and the trees will turn to a wonderous palette of red, yellow, brown, and green and shades in between. One of the things I love about living in Maryland is we get to experience all four seasons and each season brings it’s own beauty and joy. Fall is a wonderful season.
One of the by products of experiencing the beauty of the Fall, the silent blanketing of snow in the winter, the arrival of new life in the spring and the slow down heat of the summer is that we are always being reminded that life if always changing. Change is in the air year-round in the “Land of Pleasant Living”. Even though most of us live in or near the busy, bustling noisy city we are never far from the wonders of nature and the changing seasons.
Sometimes in the Fall I sit on my deck and look out into the woods, and I sit in wonder at the rain of leaves as they twist and twirl and do the dance of falling leaves until they land upon the ground. Later, in the midst of winter I will walk out onto my deck and look in wonder at a freshly painted forest of white as the snow falls and accumulates upon the same forest floor where only a short while ago the leaves fell. Then, in the twinkling of an eye spring will arrive and I will go onto the very same deck and see a new season unfolding where little trees pop up from the ground, and God sends Mother Nature to repaint the forest in a sea of green and new life chirps in the trees. Alas, after the beauty of Spring comes and goes summer will arrive and with it the sound of crickets chirping into the night, the forest now a full canopy of green and the days growing longer and longer until Fall arrives, and the cycle begins again. It’s truly a wonder and a great metaphor for life itself. There are seasons to our lives. Although the seasons come and go more slowly, sometimes almost unnoticeably the cycle of change and new seasons play out in our life as well.
As I am now in the winter of my own life I look back and I see and dearly remember the former seasons of my life. When I was a child, I was a new canvas, full of wonder and promise. Everything was new to me. When I became teenager and a young adult, I began to form my own plans for life, and I laid out the paths I would travel for the rest of my life. When I entered the middle years of my life, I began to enjoy the fruits of my labors, my children arrived, and I experienced both the wild unfettered joy of youth and the fullness of growing older. As I guided my own children in their teen years I looked back and began to see how my parents felt as they guided me through the season of youth. Now, as I am well into my Senior years I have slowed down, life keeps moving faster and faster and I face the inevitable day when I will cease to be. I don’t fear death. I don’t look forward to it either. Like all the other seasons of life it’s in the Lord’s grand scheme of things. I enjoy remembering all the people who have shared the journey with me. Some were in the path for a short time, some for a lifetime, all were a blessing to me. I’ve had a great life, full of constant change and new perspectives.
Yes, I love the arrival of a new season both in the short term of the arrival of Fall and in the long span of life itself. Live every season to the fullest. Embrace the opportunities and the joys of each season and most of all walk with the Lord all the way. Change is in the air and that’s not a bad thing.