This morning as I started writing this article, I happened to be working from my home office. My wife Joanne was about to take our 5½-year-old son Danny to school. She was also getting our two German Shepherds in our Suburban to take them to doggie daycare. When I stopped my work and went outside, Danny came to me and asked me to pray over him, which we do daily. I said a few sentences of blessing over him, then loaded up the dogs for Joanne and hugged her goodbye. As they pulled out of the driveway, I reflected to myself, what a beautiful season.
But it is a season. Everything in life is a season. In Ecclesiastes 3, Solomon reminds us in his famous Biblical passage that there is a season for life and a season for death.
“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.”
If we look at life as seasons, it can make endings more palatable. We can also enjoy and appreciate the current seasons even more.
Our tendency as humans is to forget (or be intentionally forgetful) that our life will end, and it can end at any moment as a matter of fact. It’s interesting that when we go through beautiful periods in our life, we believe they will last forever. Likewise, when we go through difficult seasons in life, we fail to see that they too will end.
A sense of melancholy permeates the concept of seasons. A sad melody plays, suggesting everything beautiful will end. However, this is reality. We need to accept it. Only then can we look at each season with the thought, what a beautiful world our Sovereign God created that gives us so many beautiful seasons to enjoy.
Here is another perspective about seasons. Imagine what life would be like without them. I could still be an eight-year-old playing soccer in the parking lot of our church with my friend in a Karantina church. My grandpa Nehme would be 117 now and still sharing stories in a very loud voice because he refuses to wear his hearing aids. See? Life without endings and devoid of seasons would simply not work. It would not be nearly as beautiful.
I recall my 10-year-old self, sitting on a couch on the balcony of our house in the beautiful mountains of Lebanon, overlooking and enjoying the soft breeze coming from the Mediterranean Sea. On nights like these, my dad Habib told me the adventures of Antar Ibn Shidad, a mythical, noble, and strong Arab tribesman. I remember the feeling of affection and belonging. I loved those nights! These days, my son Danny asks me in his Southern English, “Babi, can you tell me a story about Antar Ibn Shidad?” So I lay in bed in Crowley, Texas and tell him the same stories my dad told me in another beautiful season of my life. In a future season, maybe even when I am in heaven, Danny may be telling his son the stories his dad and grandfather shared in beautiful seasons past.
Whatever season you are in, enjoy it to the fullest. See its beauty and know that while it will end, other seasons will come, until eventually we will be with our Father in a season that will never end. When we learn to be comfortable with the seasonality of life, we are able to withstand and enter into endings and transitions with grace and courage.
Seasons. It is the title for the beautiful symphony of life that God created.
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