by Dr. Rebecca Dowden

rebeccadowden@gmail.com

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The Seasons of Our Lives

 “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

   As I sit in the long awaited spring sunshine, my red–faced, sweaty husband comes around the corner of the yard with a wheel barrel full of dead limbs and shrubs. 
  “Oh my gosh, that is a lot of dead stuff!” I survey the ravages of the harsh winter.
  “Yep, it’s time to start all over again.” As his eyes light up, he begins a long litany of things he wants to plant in our yard of twenty years.
   Isn’t it amazing how our lives mirror the cycles of nature?  God is so clever!  However, the irony is how reluctant we are to accept the “birth and death” cycles of our lives.  The scriptures are full of metaphors and parables about the cycles of nature.  In Ecclesiastes, God reminds us of all the many seasons we will see in our lives.
   Because seasons are part of God’s plan, when we refuse to “move on,” to accept the new season, whatever it may be, we may find ourselves depressed, anxious, or unfulfilled.  Each new season has a purpose and is part of God’s plan for our lives.  The challenge is to find joy and fulfillment in the seasons that are difficult: unemployment, an “empty-nest,” an illness, a new city, or the death of a friend or loved-one.  However, when we trust God and find the joy He always provides for us, we can go through the seasons of our lives and embrace their unique designs in our lives.

Trust God

   For most of us, our anxiety and depression stem from a lack of trust in God. We know the facts: God loves us and is in control of our lives, but our hearts just don’t believe it. Therefore, when the difficult seasons of our lives appear, we panic.  We feel abandoned by God, afraid, and wonder what WE can do to survive.  In the winter, if we looked out over our yards and the landscapes of our cities and towns and believed there would never be a spring, we would feel defeated and depressed. We can chuckle at this idea because we all know that spring will come. But what if our trust and belief in God was just as solid for us? Would we worry when the “winters” of our life came around? Of course not, but this kind of trust in God is something we have to cultivate in our hearts. Our relationship with God is what gives our hearts understanding of Him and when we know Him in an intimate way, we trust Him – not our circumstances.  However, many times we grow distant from God and our intimate relationship with Him begins to wither.  He becomes like a distant relative who we check in with every now and then.  We pray, but we just go through the motions.  Life gets so busy; we get so caught up in daily life, we forget about our true life line!  An intimate relationship with God is like any other meaningful relationship; it requires us to give our hearts and time to it. When we have this kind of relationship with God, we can more easily look at the bleak seasons of our life and know that just below the surface of the barren soil, God has new life ready to sprout.

Count It All Joy

James tell us in the New Testament  to “count it all joy” when we face the trials of our lives (James 1:2). Wow. We all struggle with this one. However, joy is not the same thing as happiness. Our society tends to use those terms interchangeably, but in reality, they are two separate states of being.  The Greek word for happiness is Makarios. Many times it is used in Scripture to describe a person who has received some form of good fortune. It is a temporary feeling that stems from a person’s circumstances. On the other hand, the word in Greek for joy  is Chairo. Chairo is a state of well being, the act of thriving. Therefore, when we experience difficult times in our lives, God doesn’t expect us to “pretend” that we aren’t sad or even feeling grief.  These are all God-given emotions that serve a valuable purpose in our lives, but God wants us to have a knowing that He is in control of our lives. When we can live in this paradox of sadness or grief and well-being, we can find joy.  We are thriving because we know God is carrying out His will and purpose in our lives.

When we are depressed or anxious or looking for something, other than God, to fill up our lives, we aren’t just unhappy, we are empty. This emptiness is the place God made for joy in our lives.  We can’t access the wonders of joy without an intimate relationship with God because this inner knowing is not something we can muster up. Joy grows inside us when we can open our hearts to God and feel the life transforming connection He has to offer us.

In this beautiful time of the year when we are all so happy to see the trees budding and all the new life emerging in nature, we can remind our hearts of God’s faithfulness.  We can use this time to reconnect to God and renew our relationship with Him.  God wants us to find Him in the empty landscapes of our lives and know His love will never leaves us even in our darkest winters.

Copyright Rebecca Dowden