Ebb & Flo of Seasons
Every season has its peaks and valleys. What you have to try to do is eliminate the Grand Canyon.”
Andy Van Slyke
The four seasons follow in the world about us year after year and the seasons of life follow ever faster, or so it seems.
God provided the seasons of life when He created the earth. He created the sun and the moon, the tides of the ocean, the seasons that have many names on His earth. In our lives we have the four seasons…. I am in the winter of my life – a season of remembering and reflection. A family has seasons going from generation to generation – and a marriage has seasons. We encounter many joys and many challenges that make us who we are, season after season.
Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand. Mother Teresa
The moon marks off the seasons, and the sun knows when to go down. – Psalm 104:19
I remember the farmers, I have known, who stand on the porch or in the field and foretell the seasons of the strength of the wind, plowing, planting, harvest – without the benefit of modern weather prognosticators. Gerhard Suderman, Jacob Loewen, Jacob Siemens, Jacob Brunn were all farmers. They did not attend farming classes in agricultural colleges. They learned farming from their fathers and grandfathers who reclaimed land in the Netherlands, West Prussia and in Russia, before they came to this country. Then they came to America with Red Winter Wheat packed carefully in their small storage trunks.
These hard-working Mennonites could give us many lessons today – by helping each other in planting, harvesting, and sharing what they had with their neighbor. They didn’t wait for the government. Their security and insurance were in the Lord and His commands to love one another. There were often three generations living in one household – the wisdom of the Grandparents was handed down to their grandchildren.
Esther Vogt, my second cousin, wrote a children’s book, Turkey Red, about living in a new country, learning a new language in Kansas – 1877. The Mennonites were a community. They encountered rattle snakes, Indians, harvesting wheat with scythes, and bundling by hand, a prairie fire raging through the ripe wheat field challenged them. A blinding blizzard caught two young girls going home after school. The seasons of fear and faith, heat of the sun and a freezing blizzard, and always a season of work. This book gives an accurate picture of their lives.
My Dad, Herman Bennie Siemens, was born the year his father made the run from Inman KS to Washita County in Oklahoma to stake a homestead. It was a season for change for the family:
“Most of the Washita County Mennonites came from Reno, Harvey, and Marion counties in Kansas. All had been in the United States for less than twenty years; a few for less than one year. One group came from a further distance—continuing an unbelievable trek that had taken them from their homes in the Ukraine, the Kuban, and the Volga to Turkestan, and then later to America. ……..Thirty-eight families …. came to the United States in 1884, settling in Kansas and Nebraska. Ten years later a number of them took up homesteads near Shelly. Thirty-six became charter members of the Herold Mennonite Church, located southwest of present Corn. Michael Klaassen, a veteran of the Great Trek, served as minister. With their own land and a church, they thought that finally they could settle down for good.
(Found on the internet)
Dad told me that there was hunger, tornadoes, on this flat land with few trees and red dirt. They attended the Corn Mennonite Church, which still stands. Here they experienced seasons of childhood, marriage, widowhood, hunger and doing without. They also had strong family ties. Dad told many stories of the rock hard cookies his sister made; the ‘string’ saddle for their mule that skinned their toes; taking a load of wheat to town and backing up several times to make a run to get up the hill. Hard work was always laced with love and laughter.
No matter how challenging these seasons were – faith in God was stronger and sustained them. My Grandfather and Grandmother Siemens are buried in the cemetery south of Corn, along with their daughter who died before she was two years old.
There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1
What is the secret of making it through a season, a temporary period of time, that challenges our hearts?
We know that it is temporary and we know that each season – seasons us for Coming Home to our Heavenly Father for an eternity – a forever – in the fullness of time.
The journey has been long! I’m almost homewith vehicle worn out and spent through use.Although my energy is low, my heartis full. My body aches but why complain?God’s richest blessings have been mine thus far.In retrospect, I see how He designedmy pilgrim journey on this orb called earth.A few more weary miles and I’ll be home.Written by Anna Daisy Suderman Siemens a year before she arrived Home.She has been Home for eleven years.
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