You can probably tell that I like the changing of the seasons, but I know not everyone does. That’s a choice. I don’t always welcome these seasons, of course. Ask me how excited I am about winter snow when I have to shovel our driveway.  But life always brings change, whether that change is predictable or unpredictable. I live in the strange reality of not loving predictability and routine, but still very much wanting to be in control. So often life reveals how God laughs at my grasping for control.

I’ve been thinking about changing seasons. This past weekend, my oldest son and I went on a middle school retreat to Black Rock in Quarryville, PA. The fall colors were on display and the air was crisp and cool. It got me thinking about the changing of seasons.

This was also my oldest son’s first middle school retreat, so that’s a new season in life for us, having a middle schooler and watching middle school social dynamics with one of our children in the mix.

I’ve also been listening to Andrew Peterson‘s wonderful new album,The Burning Edge of Dawn, which explores many themes related to the changing seasons.

As I’ve been watching the colors change, watching my children grow and listening to Andrew Peterson, these thoughts about “seasons of change” came to me:

1. God appointed the seasons as a blessing after the flood, so we’d have a rhythmic predictability in creation. 

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man’s heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” – Genesis 8:20-22, ESV

God’s love and compassion are on display in the changing of the seasons, allowing us to plant, water, weed and harvest in time to store food for the winter before the cycle begins again.

2. God teaches us important spiritual principles in the seasonal cycle.

• It is important for us to sow well when it is time to sow, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.
• In the growing season, weeds grow along with good plants. It is important to get ahead of the weeds before they choke out the plants.
• We must reap and store when we can, for after the harvest season comes the cold and barren time.
• Each season has its own beauty and its own fruitfulness; we must learn to appreciate and cultivate each in its own season.

3. God’s artistry is on display in every season.

• Spring shows God’s love for new life and beauty in things new and fresh.
• Summer shows the splendor of maturity and the bounty of life in full, and the power and majesty of God in the thunderstorm.
• Fall explodes with color as the leaves die, flashing a dazzling array of color at the end of their life.
• Winter, when it seems most bleak and barren, breaks forth in the most brilliant beauty of all, snow and ice.

4. We can be surprised, even by predictable things.

• When September comes, we know the colder weather is coming, but when we walk out on the first truly crisp morning of autumn, we catch our breath and shiver in the chill.
• Around here, we know we’ll probably see the first snow flakes sometime in November or early December, but that first snowfall of the year is the most splendid surprise, sparking smiles and songs. (“It’s the first snowfall of the winter, the first snowfall of the year!”)
• Then, when it seems like winter will never end, we know we’ll see flowers in spring, but when the crocuses peek through the snow and the daffodils trumpet the coming of spring, we’re surprised again!

I was surprised by the realization that I am now a 40-something father of a middle schooler and that all of my children are now in school. Of course, this has been supremely predictable for over a decade, but it has caught me by surprise nonetheless. I see pictures of myself and wonder who that grown man is, and I see videos of my sixth grader as a preschooler and wonder what happened to that little boy who squealed with delight over Thomas the Tank Engine and John Deere tractors.

5. We can choose to welcome or fight the change.

You can probably tell that I like the changing of the seasons, but I know not everyone does. That’s a choice. I don’t always welcome these seasons, of course. Ask me how excited I am about winter snow when I have to shovel our driveway.  But life always brings change, whether that change is predictable or unpredictable.

I live in the strange reality of not loving predictability and routine, but still very much wanting to be in control. So often life reveals how God laughs at my grasping for control. I hope I’m learning to laugh along.

6. Life is a spiral, not a circle.

The cycle of seasons can lead us to believe that life is an endless series of circles. But the hydrangea bush we planted before we left Maryland for the South is so much larger now, five years later. Trees may drop their leaves in a fanciful fall flourish and and may bring bright buds every spring, but they also grow taller, wider, stronger and more hospitable to more life with each passing year.

Our lives are spirals, too. We repeat many of the same patterns over and over, year after year. But as we grow, we change in permanent ways and our life shows its trajectory. Whether we’re spiraling upward or downward is not easy to see day-by-day but shows inevitably over the decades of life.

7. God is the Lord of every season.

God cares for His creation intimately in every detail, in every season.
A Creation Hymn

He makes the deer give birth.
He watches over the sparrow’s fall.
He clothes the fields with mirth.
His voice resounds in waterfall.

He makes calves leap from stalls.
He crowns the hills with flocks of sheep.
While deer leap over walls.
His eyes are on us when we sleep.

He covers hills in snow.
Then clothes them fresh in spring with bloom.
He causes crops to grow,
Then spreads the sky with stormy gloom.

Not one smallest flower,
Not the tiniest spring rain drop,
Comes without His power
And no strength can force Him to stop.

The earth resounds in praise
In every season He remains
“Glory to God!” we raise
With voices and flowers and rains!

Jason A. Van Bemmel is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America. This article appeared on his blog Ponderings of a Pilgrim Pastor and is used with permission.