God has built seasonality not just into the patterns of the earth and skies but in terms of how we function too.

I have been challenged this week about the season I am. We were reading the passage in Ecclesiastes 3 1-11 in our Grow Group.
Here it is from the Amplified Version:
” To everything there is a season, and a time for every matter or purpose under heaven:
2 A time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted,
3 A time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build up,
4 A time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance,
5 A time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones together, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
6 A time to get and a time to lose, a time to keep and a time to cast away,
7 A time to rend and a time to sew, a time to keep silence and a time to speak,(B)
8 A time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.(C)
9 What profit remains for the worker from his toil?
10 I have seen the painful labor and exertion and miserable business which God has given to the sons of men with which to exercise and busy themselves.
11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.”

You would be a rubbish farmer if you only wanted to work in one season”¦ or if you were only interested in one season. As a farmer you have to prepare the ground and till the soil before you even get to plant the seed. Even then, you don’t have much to show for your work. Just brown, empty-looking (fertile) earth. You have to be prepared for it to look like you and God have done nothing. But not so!

So much of what God is doing in us is a secretly growing seed, underground, buried, silent, seemingly still; huge potential captured in a tiny thing. Opportunity waiting for the right environment to burst out.

In the meantime it is easy to look at other people’s fields and all their fruit, harvest, success and wonder whether we have done something wrong.

But God knows what season we need to be in, what we need to learn before we can move on. He knows our gifts and He will NEVER waste His resources. He just may not use our talents in the ways we expect or at the time we hope.

Do not be tempted to look back and think “What if?” questions. They aren’t helpful. Don’t be tempted to compare yourself or your life to another person’s gifts, marriage, ministry, career or kids. That’s like trying to compare a pear with wheat. It has little point. They are different and have different uses.

The other thing I realised afresh this week is that if we fight God about the season we are in “Why aren’t I producing fruit now? Why am I being pruned?…” You know what? We will stay in the season longer! It is in acceptance that God can teach and mould us not in fighting Him.

So if you don’t like the season you find yourself in, REPENT and do business with God. Tell Him HE is in charge and you are not. Agree with Him now that He has good things for you to learn here and now and write a list of what you are picking up.

Find others in the Bible who went through something similar and immerse yourself in their story. For it is your story too.

Accept your season. The beauty of seasons is there is another one coming.

Read again this beautiful verse in v 11 of the above passage…

He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy]

I pray for you today that God satisfies your searching and yearning in whatever season you find yourself.