Ahh! I am so happy that it is October and the autumn season has begun! I’m currently pulling out all my autumn sweaters and sipping on my pumpkin spice latte and making apple butter! Hopefully, the weather will catch up here soon in Arizona, but everything else is feelin’ cozy!
Recently, I have been reading through the book The Seasons of God by Richard Blackaby. He walks you through the realization that life consist of these shifting patterns or seasons. They are the same seasons we experience each year in nature: spring, summer, fall, and winter. And if we can begin to understand what each season brings and looks like, we can change our approach to how we live into it. So that, each season can bring us hope, direction, insight, and intimacy with God.
I would love share my takeaways for each season with you! But I’ll start small and just share about fall today.
The Beauty in the Changing Season of Life
It can be bittersweet to see a season of life go by. And yet, there is something so beautiful about it. In the book the Seasons of God, Blackaby goes through Ecclesiastes 3, where the Bible explains how there is a season for everything.
What Blackaby shares about the changing of seasons is so beautiful. He says, “this passage helps us ‘to see perpetual change not as something unsettling but as an unfolding pattern, scintillating and God-given.’ We might suppose we’d prefer a permanently stable life with fixed and comfortable routines, but ‘there is something better…. Instead of a frozen perfection there is a kaleidoscope of movement of innumerable processes, each with its own character and a period of blossoming and ripening, beautiful in its time and contributing to the over-all masterpiece which is the work of one Creator.’”
He goes on to wrestle through the next verse saying that God has placed eternity in the human heart. And although we are not capable of fathoming it all yet, we can begin to grasp and appreciate the beauty in changing seasons now.
The Bible encourages us to live into every changing season fully and enjoy what each season has to offer!
The Seasons Leading to Fall
It is tricky to explain the beauty of one season, without first giving you a little context as to what the previous seasons looked like.
If in spring you have fresh hope, new excitement, and big dreams, it is as if you have little seeds just tucked warmly in the earth and beginning to bud.
As these dreams begin to grow and sprout, your spring turns to summer.
Summers are full of long hard, sweaty days. It is a lot of work and upkeep. You are out in the field every day before sunrise working hard and not in bed until after dark. You care deeply for growth of this harvest, that will come soon enough. And although you know this season is only for a short period, each day feels longer than you would have ever imagined.
Maybe, spring is a new job. It is exciting and the future looks bright! But once it turns to summer the work just continues to stack up higher and higher. You’re busier than you fully realized you would be with this job and it is seemingly taking over your life. You have less time for the fun things you used to do. And other relationships and non-work-related events are pushed to the back burner for now.
Maybe spring is a new relationship with the guy you think is perfect and he is the one. But while adjusting to married life, it turns to summer. You have to work through each other’s little quirks and learn how to adjust to this new season together.
For moms, spring might be being pregnant with this tiny little baby. But it turns to summer as soon as the baby is born. It is long nights and full days taking care of your child. Despite being sleep deprived and worn out, you still love and care for this baby with every passing second. Everyone says this season goes by quickly, but to you being in it, it feels so long.
A Season for Gratitude & Enjoyment
Fall is such a joyful season of life to live into! Mainly, because in order to experience your fall season of life to its full abundance, you first have had to work through a hard summer.
These long-feeling summer seasons only increase the joy and the gratitude of autumn.
In his book Seasons of God, Richard writes, “Life’s autumn seasons are generally when people make their greatest contributions. They gather the seeds they planted in spring and labored over during summer to produce a harvest in fall. As Ecclesiastes 3 notes, there is a ‘time to plant, and a time to pluck what is planted’ (verse 2). Autumn is plucking season.
Every stage of life has four seasons, and autumn marks the peak of each stage and the climax of everything that has gone before. This is the season when people draw upon their strengths, successes, failures, and the wisdom gained along the way. As a result, autumn is generally the most productive and rewarding of the seasons.”
Autumn is when other new moms begin asking you questions on how to raise such wonderful children. They begin looking to you and the relationship you have with your children for encouragement and hope.
Fall is when you are promoted and when all your hard work begins to pay off (literally). Life slows down and you begin to enjoy what you have been working for. Your personal life and relationships begin to flourish again.
Fall for the once newly married and young couple could be entering back into the honeymoon phase of their relationship, after the children have grown and the fullness of life has slowed down. Fall is enjoying the company of their spouse again. It is when younger couples look to them for advice on how to create an inspiring legacy in their own relationships. One that is faithful, loving, and committed.
Autumn seasons are meant to be enjoyed. If you are in fall, live into it fully. Let your shoulders relax again, be present, and enjoy this harvest with the loved ones around you.
A Time to Reap What You Have Sown
If you are like me, and not in your season of fall yet, I think it is valuable to look ahead and know what the seasons ahead of us look like.
If autumn is harvesting or reaping what you have sown and planted, I think we should be aware and intentional about what we are planting now.
As wonderful as fall sounds, to have a good job that has provided well, family and friendships that are flourishing, and a slower season to just enjoy. I think fall can bring a very little harvest, if we are not wise with what and how we are planting now.
“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.”
– Galatians 6:7-10
However, if we are intentional about sowing the fruit of the Spirit into our lives every day now, God has promised blessings in our fall season.
When you tuck love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control into everything you do, how much more beautiful autumn will be?
Just a few thoughts as we enter into this next beautiful season and end of the year. My hope is that we would finishes this year strong, focused, and being intentional to bring the fruit of the Spirit into our lives every day.
I hope this blog brings you encouragement and life no matter what season of life you are in!
