March2104_Faith and Living
… Pastor Gary Levens
Discerning the Seasons of Life.
The Bible tells us that “to everything there is a season…” So often we only think of the seasonal changes as they relate to the time of year and weather. Yet, this passage reminds us that everything has its season. The passage goes on to say that there’s…
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance….
Many times I come across folk who seem to be stuck in a season that is not good for them. It’s as though they have become mired in something that is afflicting them. Their world has become seemingly forever grey and cold, a little like the Narnia story where it had been made ‘forever winter but never Christmas.’
A few years ago, we were running a Divorce Recovery workshop on Brisbane’s Northside. We had many folk from the community come along. The thing that struck me more than anything else were the number of people who told me that since the divorce their life had gone into a kind of ‘holding pattern’ where they felt as if they were treading water but not getting anywhere. Some had been like that for 15 years or more. That’s not a season, that’s a life sentence! God has better than that for us. He’s designed it so that everything has its season. If you need to mourn the loss of something or someone, it’s good and healthy to do so, but don’t let that season drag on forever. At some stage you must put away the mourning clothes and let the springtime come again.
Sometimes even the good things in life can be problematic if we allow ourselves to lock-in to them and never move on. Some folk never stop talking about the good old days. Hey, the good old days were good but today’s a new day, a new season and it’s our opportunity to live it now! Time to declare a new season over your life? Go ahead and do it now.
Gary Levens is Pastor of Dayboro Church.
