Two
weeks ago we visited Rocky Mountain National Park. The elk were everywhere. Their bugle echoed
through the hills. Peaceful cows grazed
in the meadows under the watchful eye of the antlered-bull that gathered them
for mating season. Through winter and
summer they disappear into the vast forests, but, in the fall, when the Aspen
tinge the mountain slopes with yellow, they appear, bold and fearless. They
have been doing this for thousands of years, long before humans wandered these
valleys.
All
of nature is synchronized with the seasons.
The geese fill the skies with wind singing in their wings. Monarch butterflies migrate from Canada to
Mexico. The maple, oak and sumac fire the hills with crimson and gold preparing
the way for vast white blankets of snow.
Our
concrete, plastic and glass world attempts to insulate us from nature’s rhythms. So do our drugs. They deaden our souls and
our senses. We are more alive when we
connect with the rhythms God has built into his creation. The changing seasons
seek to awaken us, to remind us that the same creative power that painted the
mountains and designed the migrations of the birds also created us.
All
of life is lived in seasons, from birth to death. Each is made for celebration,
for life and learning and loving: playful childhood, visionary youth,
responsible adulthood, reflective old age.
The seasons of life fill our souls with songs of faith, love, hope, joy
and sorrow. We all experience seasons of health and seasons of illness, seasons
of plenty and seasons of lack, seasons of pain and seasons of joy.
Ecclesiasts
puts it best: “There is a time for everything, and a
season for every activity under the heavens: 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, a time to scatter stones and a time
to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing, a time
to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a
time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-8).
In all of our seasons we
can celebrate God’s presence as our Creator and sustainer, the savior of our
soul.
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