Seasons

I had the unexpected surprise when I awoke this past Sunday of finding the time had changed and we’d gained an hour. As I looked out the window, I saw further evidence of the change in season. Some trees had dropped their leaves, while the one in our back yard, always about a month behind the others, glowed a brilliant yellow. Two beautiful maples down the street had been aflame in red. Curiously, one already dropped all its leaves, while the other has steadfastly held onto them.

This got me to thinking about our lives—and how, like these trees, we also seem to have individual times and seasons. I don’t think one tree looks at another anxiously saying, “When should I change color?” or “When am I supposed to drop my leaves? What is everybody else doing?” And yet we so easily do the equivalent, comparing ourselves to others, wanting to conform, to fit in, to find acceptance.

I’m glad that our tree out back and the red one a few houses down the street follow a different schedule. It lets me enjoy the fall season a little longer! Similarly, I think God is perfectly content with the speed at which we grow individually. He takes pleasure in our seasons of development, of our branching out and trying different things. He watches and enjoys our flourishing and producing fruit, whenever it happens.

I enjoy the many times in scripture our lives are likened to that of trees. A couple of passages I love to think about appear in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17. Verse three of the Psalm likens God’s child to a tree “firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.”

Jeremiah 17:7-8 goes on to say, “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD and whose trust is the LORD. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.”

As I enter a later season in life, still full of desires and expectations for the future, I find tremendous encouragement from Psalm 92 :12-14, which says,
The righteous man will flourish like the palm tree, he will grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Planted in the house of the LORD, they will flourish in the courts of our God. They will still yield fruit in old age; they shall be full of sap and very green.

Just as God made the trees and called it good, so He did with His human creations. We need not compare ourselves with others or fret about our timetable. We just need to sink our roots down and drink deep from the stream of life in the Holy Spirit and feed on God’s Word. The fruit will inevitably come.

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