0 Items

Do The Seasons Of Life Matter? How To Be Fruitful.

by | Health and Energy

As I look out the window, a cold front has come in bringing back Canadian winter. It’s gloomy. Frost is sticking to the trees making everything look white. It appears there isn’t much hope for warmer weather and the promise of spring, or summer.

When I think of seasons, specific associations come with them:

  • Winter – snow – hockey season
  • Spring – returning of the birds – going for runs again
  • Summer – fresh fruit – sitting outside enjoying the sun
  • Fall – tree leave colours – Thanksgiving holiday
Maybe you have similar associations. Maybe yours are different. However, each of us has meaningful associations for each of the seasons.
 
Have you noticed that your life flows in seasons as well? And if so, what season are you in? How can you tell? What do the different seasons mean? What are you supposed to do when you know what season you are in?
 

In this blog series, we explore the seasons of the heart.

 
Winter. Spring. Summer. Fall. And how you can tell what season you are in, and what activities you should be doing in the different seasons.
 
First though, why does this matter?
 
Most of the time when we think of seasons and life, we think more about our age. These groupings can differ depending on who you talk to, and they often have different names.
  • Spring = Childhood
  • Summer = Young Adulthood
  • Fall = Middle Adulthood
  • Winter = Old Age
Or maybe something nobler such as Page, Squire, Knight, Sage.
 
Solomon begins Chapter 3 in Ecclesiastes “For everything there is a season…” (NLT). This means no matter what season you are in, or what is happening in your life, there is a reason. There is meaning.
 
The first few verses of Ecclesiastes 3 certainly reference age and our traditional seasons
A time to be born and a time to die.
    A time to plant and a time to harvest. (Ecc 3:2)
 
But what about the rest of verses 3-8?
  • Kill – Heal
  • Tear down – Build up
  • Cry – Laugh
  • Grieve – Dance
  • Scatter stone – Gather stones
  • Embrace – Turn away
  • Search – Quit searching
  • Keep – Throw away
  • Tear – Mend
  • Be quiet – Speak
  • Love – Hate
  • War – Peace
All of this can happen regardless of age or weather patterns. So there’s something more to Solomon speaking about seasons.
 
That’s where seasons of the heart come into play.
 

Regardless of what season you feel you may be in, how you steward those seasons will cause growth or repercussions.

 
Farmers do certain activities in different seasons. They “plow in one season, plant in another, irrigate in another, harvest in another, and let the fields lie fallow in yet another.”1 Some activities wouldn’t make sense in certain seasons.
 
Psalm 1:3 speaks of “bearing fruit each season,” meaning regardless of what is going on in our lives, we are to undertake the activities that work towards bearing fruit in our lives.
 
Mark Buchanan summarizes it this way:
 
“If we are to bear much fruit–if that’s the goal of the Christian life–then the best model for spiritual maturity is seasons. Fruit grows in seasons, and all seasons are necessary for growing it. And seasons are as much about what is not happening as what is. It has as much to do with inactivity as with activity, waiting as with working, barrenness as with abundance, dormancy as with vitality.”1
 
We need to know what season we are in, and what to do in that season. Then we can recognize how and when we are shifting to a different season and change our activities to bear abundant fruit.
 
What would our lives look like if each of us regularly and consistently worked to bear fruit in each season? Think of the impact we could have on our families, friends, church, and the world around us?
 
My question for you is, what season do you think you are in and what are you supposed to do in that season? Leave a comment below.
 
 
 
 

1Buchanan, M. (2010). Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan.