Moving Through The Seasons Of Life

There are things to do in life but those things to only carry us through the season. We need more than what activities can offer.

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace. What gain has the worker from his toil? I have seen the business that God has given to the children of man to be busy with. He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end." - Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 ESV

There is a God shaped hole in each heart. Nothing can fill it but someone shaped like God. Children can't fill it. Romance can't fill it and neither can a career or fame and recognition.

We all know men who just march through seasons of life because they have an activity to keep them going. The job becomes their identity. Their children become what they live for But nothing, nothing, nothing can fill that hole but God.

"A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, 'It is finished,' and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." - John 19:29-30 ESV

The cross was the darkest time in human history. It was all the dying, tearing, hating and war wrapped up into one horrible day. Jesus drank the sour wine of all the worst of our seasons when He went to the cross but He went there to make things beautiful for us.

"And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh." - Ezekiel 36:26 ESV

Activity is a way of coping but relationships are what make things beautiful. If God takes the heart with a hole and replaces it with a new one then we can have relationships and do things for love's sake and we aren't trying to fill a space that can never be filled.

I see people putting on a brave face as they trudge onward and I wonder, 'Will they ever stop doing long enough to just be?' because we all need to just let God love us. Jesus already drank the bitter cup so we can live in the beauty of reconciliation.

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