The changing seasons of life
Most of us live in a climate that has changing seasons. Depending on your articulation, you may start with spring, then summer, fall, and winter. These four seasons are recognized, celebrated, and denigrated by personal preference. Each season brings with it inherent likes and dislikes. The weather alone accounts for more conversation that any other singular topic. And weather portrays the season in part and in whole as it unfolds in time.
Spring brings blooming flowers, fresh rain, or mudslides and floods. Summer generates vacations, suntan lotion, sunburns, swimming outdoors, grass cutting, gardens, sweating, and bugs. Fall carries beautiful foliage, cooler temperatures, leaf raking, and hurricane season. Winter passes into glistening snow, sled riding, holiday cheer, freezing conditions, higher heating bills and bad, dirty roads.
Each season signifies change. With their own holidays, decorations, special events, and meanings. Positive or negative, each season is unique to itself and may be valued and appreciated more for its impact and meaning in someone蘑菇视频 life.
Humans also have seasons, and as we age, we go through changes. Consider the start of it all. Jer 1:1A, 鈥淏efore I formed you in the womb, I knew you, before you were born, I set you apart.鈥� God identifies the unborn as someone he knows, as if they are a person, and can establish a plan for that person蘑菇视频 life. As that life starts to move into another season, Jesus in Matt 19:14A instructs, 鈥淟et the little children come to me, and do not hinder them.鈥� Childhood should be a season of answering the wondrous questions about God that young impressionable inquisitive minds seek.
Another progression of season would be young adults. Many parents face the struggle between the growing independence, if not resistance to parental oversight, but the coaching found in Prov 1:8 says, 鈥淟isten my son to your Father蘑菇视频 instruction and do not forsake your Mother蘑菇视频 teaching.鈥� Loving parents always are on the look out for what蘑菇视频 best for their children, even when their children are adults.
Most of us follow a general pattern. We have romance. Fall in love. Get married, have children. With that we are employed, get an education, start careers, occupations, businesses, purchase property, set up housing, and whatever overlap these things may bring.
Then at some point, we find ourselves middle-aged. Our bodies become slower, gray hair creeps in, the waistline is growing, hairlines recede, and somehow previously unknown aches and pains become our frequent friends. Yet we find that our decision making has developed into more nuance and we have some life history as a reference.
The changing seasons of life for the most part are the changing seasons of age. You can鈥檛 go back in time. You can only move forward from where you鈥檙e at. You can鈥檛 change what蘑菇视频 been done but must handle the situation at hand. Expectantly as the seasons of life advance, we become more attuned and prepared for whatever future unfolds for us.
Obviously physical limitations and realities sink in as we get older, but other areas should be improving. Hopefully, finances are more secure, and life becomes more settled? Beneficially, each generation seeks to warn, encourage, and instruct the succeeding one about the things of life. Issuing words of wisdom since they have experienced a season that the next generation has yet to.
Phrases like: Enjoy your children, enjoy life and your youth while you can. And then becoming reminiscent or nostalgic about a previous season of life they are referring to. Isn鈥檛 it strange/funny that when your young you want to be older, and when your older, you want to be younger? Or is it that want the benefits that both seasons bring?
Each has (dis)advantages. When your older you look back, with what regrets or fondness? When your young, how do you see the future, or next season of life? With fear, or anticipation and excitement? At the end, the final season of life, the great question comes, what next? Heb 9:27 notifies us, 鈥淛ust as people are destined to die once, and after that the judgment.鈥� Life after death? Or life after this life? Those that call on the name of the Lord shall be saved, Romans 10:13.