Spiritual Seasons

Sluggards do not plow in season;
so at harvest time they look but find nothing.
Proverbs 20:4 (NIV)

Here in the state of Iowa Spring is beginning to appear. The temperatures have been slowing creeping into in the 60s and 70s during the day. The last of the giant mountain of Winter’s snow piled up in front of our house was finally completely melted this week. Our brown lawn is starting to “green-up” and the bare trees will soon have a green hue as the leaves begin to bud.

Friends, clients, and colleagues who have never experienced life in the Midwest will often tell me that I’m crazy to live here. It’s like spending your Winter in the arctic and your Summer in Death Valley. There is some truth to the face that we get to experience weather in all of its extremes. But, we also get to experience all four seasons in their unique, diverse distinctions in ways my friends never will.

Along my Life journey, I’ve come to understand that there is a spiritual lesson to be gained in the seasons of a year. Life, death, resurrection, renewal, struggle, trial, perseverance, change, and contentment. They are all part of creation’s perpetual story from Spring to Summer to Autumn to Winter each year.

As I read the proverb above this morning, I was struck by the word “season.” If I’m not disciplined to put in the word and plow in the Spring, then when Autumn’s harvest arrives and I need what is necessary to survive Winter, I have nothing. This means I might not survive to the next Spring.

But it wasn’t nature here in the agrarian land of Iowa that the proverb made me think about.

God’s base language is metaphor. Metaphor is layered with meaning. Here is the layer of meaning that the proverb surfaced for me in the quiet this morning…

Even as a successful farmer is disciplined in cultivating, planting, weeding, pruning, harvesting and storing, so there are spiritual disciplines that are required throughout the seasons of Life to prepare for the unknowns of future seasons.

As a young man, I was taught and mentored in spiritual disciplines such as quiet, study, Word, contemplation, prayer, introspection, sacrament, worship, fellowship, generosity, and service. These disciplines in life’s Spring-like seasons when things are good and life is easy are spiritual seeds. It takes mindfulness, time and discipline to sow them, cultivate them, and tend to them daily. But, they eventually grow and bloom into spiritual fruit such as love, joy, peace, faith, perseverance, and self-control. This fruit will be required when, eventually, Life’s harsh seasons of death, trial, and tragedy blow in unexpectedly.

In the quiet this morning I find myself thankful for those who taught me, schooled me, mentored me, and exemplified for me spiritual disciplines. Along Life’s road, I’ve witnessed and walked along-side individuals who had no spiritual reserves when seasons of tragedy caught them by surprise. Winter gets long if I have nothing stored up. Spiritually, I might not survive.