Seasons
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which 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 get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, 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 of war, and a time of peace.”
- Pete Seeger of the “Byrds” borrowing liberally from Ecclesiastes
I grew up as a beach rat. Hanging out at the shore and dunes of a small back bay that was reachable by foot or bike as a young boy and then to a much larger beach and National seashore by car as a teenager. My time on the shores was largely unfettered and unsupervised. That led to all kinds of great boyhood stuff early and all kinds of destructive behavior as I aged.
One of the things a coastal community of South Texas didn’t provide for much of was a traditional change of seasons.
There was a hurricane season and then a non-hurricane one.
There were the infrequent days where barefoot and shirtless meant you were a bit cold and all the rest when you weren’t.
There was the seemingly endless summer and then the interruption of the school year.
But in the way that most people would think of the changing of seasons, we didn’t really experience that. Living on the edge of the Texas Hill Country now, I get a little more of a sense of seasons, but it is still pretty different than most understand.
As a father and coach, the ideas of seasons has taken on a whole new meaning. There are seasons of:
first grandchildren
an empty nest
leadership transitions
growing/scaling businesses
owner to team led conversions
transitioning family businesses to next generations
My wife and I are wrapping up a weeklong escape to our beloved Colorado. There is something about experiencing the physical change of seasons that brings insight, understanding, and clarity to the more philosophical ones. The aspens and others that we encounter on our Jeep rides (like in the picture in this post) make the coming of seasons feel glorious and pregnant with expectation.
That is how it should be.
While there is uncertainty in every coming change of season, we should embrace the unknown with “breathless expectation” as my beloved Oswald says. There is a way things work in the Kingdom of God and everything has an appropriate time and season. Our job is to lean into and embrace the change. To seek interpretation from wisdom both here and beyond.
Consider
Are you in a change of season? Life, family, or professionally?
Are you leaning into that change and finding clear interpretation for what is going on?
Are you facing those changing seasons with the fear of uncertainty or with “breathless expectation”?