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A Season of Hope
By: Mary Elder-Criss
Seasons. If you live in an area where there are four individual ones, then you will grasp the most important factor regarding them, and that is they all involve change. Spring becomes summer, summer eventually fades away into autumn, autumn will evolve into winter, and winter will again vanquish into spring. There is an old saying, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” This is certainly true of the differences in seasons. Although each season will share some of the familiar qualities of ones previous, they do eventually transform into a different period. Each season must eventually end for another to begin.
In Ecclesiastes Chapter 3, beginning at verse 1 it says: “To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted....”
Although each season brings with it changes, and purposes, we, in our limited understanding, may not always realize what the purposes may be at the time. Perhaps you feel you have been living through an endless winter, where everything seems barren, stark, and cold. It has become hard to find the warmth of God’s love and His promises for your life. You have begun to feel that spring is beyond your reach, and you remain huddled in abject misery, shivering, with a chill that reaches deep into your bones.
Alternatively, perhaps you feel as if you are trapped in the blazing heat of summer. All around you, the landscape is dry and withered, dying from thirst. You feel as if you have been in the fire infinitely, and the temperature just keeps increasing. You have sweated through financial difficulties, family problems, health concerns, and your strength has just melted away. You long for the refreshment of spiritual rain to fall into your life, but all you can see as far as the horizon permits are more waves of shimmering heat.
Whatever season you are enduring, you are beginning to wonder if it will ever end. Your intellect says yes, while your heart screams “No!” Many times, we look so far ahead that we become gripped by despair. Instead, we need to experience each season one day at a time, and rely on God for our manna to make it through each one.
In Lamentations Chapter 3, beginning at verse 22, we see these promises: Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness. “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “Therefore I hope in Him!”
The Christmas season approaching has been dubbed, “The Season of Hope” by many. Yet, each season of a Christian’s life should carry this title. Christ came so that we could have hope. He IS our blessed hope. This hope is not limited to the months of November and December, when it is acknowledged more in feel-good commercials portraying holiday cheer, and family gatherings, but is instead, as promised in Lamentations, a daily gift. His mercies are new every morning, regardless what season you are living through, His faithfulness is great, and that in itself is definitely enough reason to make each season, a season of hope.
Copyright December 8, 2003
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