Change of Seasons
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. Ecclesiastes 3:1-2.
Seasons on this earth are accepted and ordained by our Lord God, who created this earth and the universe surrounding it. The sun comes up and sets, the moon wanes and becomes full again. We cannot stop change, but we can control our response to it.
Our bodies go through changes. We learn to walk; we learn to talk; we learn to do many things. Then the day comes when we find out we are not able to do as much. Our stamina is not what it once was. My son, who sang in the church choir, came to me and said, “Mom, you lost your tenor!”
It is when my husband climbed the ladder to work on the roof, at 85, I realized something would change. Two years later we lived in a different home and the diagnosis of Dementia hung over our heads. Change. Why?
Change disrupts plans, interrupts the rhythms of life, and causes new directions. Has it ever happened before? This led me to a website of an outline of pandemics, plagues, and times of human epidemics from 3000 BC to the present worldwide Covid-19.
How easy it is to be lulled into a comfortable routine. We want to believe we control the changes in our lives. Changing the position of the furniture in our home is all the change we want. How easy it is to lose sight of God’s truth and make decisions to protect our comfort and our way of living, not realizing what we are missing.
God uses our waiting-time to change us for His Purposes. During this time of ‘sheltering,’ we have many suggestions on how to spend our time. I spend contemplating God’s Word and am satisfied.
He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6.
The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord. Lamentations 3:25-26.
Jeremiah 29:11 is quoted, to find our purpose in the Lord. There is more. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. Jeremiah 29:11-13.
We will find our Lord when we seek with all our hearts. He does not hide from us. He will always be. And we will always be His, for He created us. One of my favorite verses comes from Ecclesiastes 3:11. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, He has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that He cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
God spends time with every baby conceived in a Mother’s Womb. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Psalm 139:16-17.
If we encounter so many changes in this world, what can we rely on for a certainty? How can we be transformed to find our way in Him?
The Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, the triune God, is unchanging in holiness, righteousness, and glory. “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.” Revelation 1:8.
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James 1:17.
Our God will outlast the heavens: “Of old, you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment.” Psalm 102:26.
What will not change?
God’s Word. 1 Peter 1:23 – Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God
God’s Love. I Chronicles 16:34 – Oh give thanks to the Lord, for He is good; for His steadfast love endures forever!
God’s Purpose. Hebrews 6:17-19 – So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain
Jesus’s Intercession for us. Hebrews 7:21-22 – but this one was made a priest with an oath by the one who said to him: “The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, You are a priest forever.’” This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant.
Judgment Day. 2 Corinthians 5:10 – For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.
Our Final Destination. I Peter 1:3-4 – Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you.
Comments? eacombs@att.net