A Season for Every Purpose

03 June 2021

Does life feel fast or slow to you?

This time of year, life feels like it shifts into fifth gear, for me.

Today I said a few words at the COS Preschool “Graduation.” These little ones who we’ve enjoyed at chapel each Wednesday are ready to take on kindergarten. Wow.
During the Festival of Pentecost last weekend, our faith family not only celebrated the baptismal journey milestone of “First Communion” for some of our young ones but also “Senior Sunday.” How is it possible that kids who in just a few blinks of an eye ago seemed to running around the COS hallways as confirmation kids are now college-bound?!
Martha Kahley’s upcoming marriage to Christopher Martin reminds us of all the college kids now ready to start families.
Yesterday, a pastoral colleague I’ve always looked up to as a model of never-ending vitality shared how the first year of his retirment is unfolding.
Likewise, you’ve heard Pastor Miriam and I communicate how many funerals we’ve attended, celebrating the the next chapters of God’s surprise now that various friends have finished their earthly race.

Ecclesiastes 3.1 declares, “for everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” Indeed, but sometimes the seasons fly faster than masks coming off Covid masks at the end of the day. Just as we see the hands of time keep ticking at COS, I feel it in my own household. Last week, I enjoyed taking Morgan and her UGA house-mates out to dinner to celebrate the completion of their junior year. Soon we push to Nashville to visit our son Luke as he works in the music business industry. Sometimes I wonder how we moved so quickly from tee-ball, UNO games, and piano lessons to college graduations and first jobs!

In high school, I remember a song from one of our musicals, Fiddler on the Roof. The lyrics to Sunrise, Sunset make a lot more sense having lived five decades instead of less than two: “Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play? I don’t remember growing older. When did they?” Yet, while the passage of time might feel bittersweet at moments, the blessing of never-ending new adventures is amazing. So how about this second piece of theatrical wisdom, from Dead Poet’s Society?: “Carpe Diem,” or “seize the day.” Each day is a fresh gift and opportunity from God. In each and every chapter of family and personal life, we give thanks to God. As someone once said, we treasure the past and future, but we are called foremost to unwrap the joy of the NOW—and that’s why it’s called the PRESENT.

Or as my cousin once said, less eloquently, but just as memorably, “Some days the family schedule feels like +*%#, but I remind myself to enjoy and praise God for the gift of that day, because some time in the future I’ll look back on those crazy moments with a tender heart. For amid the +*%# God also offered gold.”

John Ylvisaker’s “Borning Cry” song tenderly reminds us that in all seasons of life, whether they seem to roll fast or slow, God is present with us. When we take our borning cries, wander off chasing demons, find people with which to share time, struggle to make the verses rhyme mid-life, or enter the season when we see evening more clearly on the way to a new morning. In fun moments and tough, God is with us. So enjoy the ride!

Let us pray. Dear God, help those rejoicing in new seasons of life to enjoy them; offer your couarge to those for whom the passage of time brings worry. Whatever I face, on the cusp of this new summer help me take time to smell the roses. To enjoy the people and moments you with which you are blessing me with THIS season. From the rising of the sun each day to the going down of the same (Psalm113.3) I want to embrace each day and give praise to you as the One who provides it and invites me into it. In Jesus’ name, Amen.