To Everything There is a Season
Fall is here! Maybe you can’t tell yet. The calendar still says summer. The thermometer still says summer. But Labor Day has come and gone. School is back in full force and we have returned to our regular schedules and routines. I love the freedom of summer, but I don’t love the temperatures. Give me a crisp day and a chance to bask in the sun without melting. I love the planning and planting of fall, not the weeding and maintaining of summer!
This year I’ve been longing for the fall a little more than normal. Typically, I can sustain myself during the 98 degree days by focusing on fresh peaches, strawberries, mangoes, figs, and all the bounty of summer, but this year it’s just been TOO HOT and TOO DRY! When we moved in four years ago, we planted oak leaf hydrangeas in the shade, and even they needed watering again and agin this summer.
But, on Tuesday morning, at 5:45 AM (thanks to CMS and their high school start times), I was awake and drinking coffee on my patio. And for the first time in MONTHS, I thought, “I’m a little chilly.” It was glorious.
While I would hardly qualify 64 degrees as a cold snap (everything is relative), these slightly cooler temperatures are a reminder that nothing lasts forever. To everything there is a season. Those words come from the Book of Ecclesiastes, and the name of that book means Preacher.
What sermon are they preaching? A time to plant, a time to pluck up; a time to live, a time to die. And in one of the most beautifully confusing passages of the entire bible,
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes,
but the earth remains for ever.
…it is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after the wind.
Sounds hopeless. And worse yet, vanity could be translated meaninglessness. But the promise the Preacher makes is that God meets us in that hopeless place. God meets us, even when we cannot discern the meaning. God meets us, even when there is no meaning. Trusting that, is perhaps the hardest job in a life of faith.
The seasons of the year remind us: nothing lasts forever. The brutal summer heat can be practice for enduring a challenging season in my life, all while trying to savor the joys that remain. The passing seasons remind me to notice my life, even as one day moves inexorably to the next.
Nothing lasts forever, not even this oppressive heat. Nothing lasts forever, not even the coldest winter. Nothing lasts forever.
I have two more school years with my youngest daughter living at home, and I plan to get up at 5:45 most every one of those days. She doesn’t need me to drive her to school any more. And she doesn’t really even need me to wake her up. I usually fill up her water bottle, just so I can feel useful. She’ll graduate in less than two years. Nothing lasts forever.
And God has been there the whole time. From the first moment I saw her, to the soccer fields buzzing with six year olds. In the phantom brake pedal as I was teaching her how to drive, and in the first time she backed out of the driveway alone. Nothing lasts forever, and God has been there the whole time.
The promise of Ecclesiastes is that God will meet you at every turn. If God can meet you in the vanity, the meaninglessness, of this world - then God can meet you in your morning commute, and your trip to the water fountain just for a break from your desk, and in the busy routine of carpool, practice, homework, and dinner.
Nothing lasts forever, and God meets us at every turn.