on seasons

Which part of you is God tending to?

Outside my window, the edges of the leaves are starting to turn. Speckled with burnt orange splotches, they bow in the wind to the season drawing near. Without a fuss, the trees sense the coming autumn and give themselves over to it, allowing it to color their bodies as they turn to gold, blaze, and enter a simplified rest. 

Throughout the biblical text, we are compared to such trees: a tree planted beside streams of water, an olive tree in the house of God, a tree of the field clapping our hands in surrender and celebration. I wonder if this is because we, too, are made to be ephemeral beings completely dependent on the sustenance of a Maker who tends to us with care and generosity. We are led beside streams of water while we wait for God to come, that we might root down and grow up all at once, ever undergoing the often invisible transformation into who we are made to be. 

At the start of another school year, as the days grow shorter, as the rhythms of our days shift to include whatever the autumn brings, where are our souls responding to the season? Which part of you is God tending to? Which part of you is seeking rest and renewal? Which part is turning to gold? 

What might it look like for us to surrender to God's prompting as the season shifts, refusing to berate ourselves for not living up to our own expectations of how things ought to have gone or progress, but treating ourselves like the rest of God's creation, as seasonal organisms in their own rhythm of life. We do not accuse the tree of losing her leaves, nor do we blame our plants for needing water. In the same way, our Maker reaches out and touches us with a hand of gentle care, providing space for our persistent changing. 

Nothing in this soft world is in bloom forever; rather, as we, with creation, die and are renewed in our own time, we are able to house the reality of God's resurrection power in our own bodies. From longer seasons of productive growth and quiet rest, to the ebbing rhythms of work and rest in our day-to-day, we can remember that no feeling is final, that creation is walking this journey with us, that the most important work is done in the dark. 

What comfort it is that God creates and recreates us as seasonal beings. When we feel weary or alone as we live out our lives, we can trust that God, in God's mercy, has made space for us to slow down, to reset, to sleep, to be tended to, and in time, to be made new.