A season to celebrate

Which season impresses you the most? How many springs have I been so hopeful that this year’s baseball season for my home team, the Seattle Mariners, will be the best? Summer gives us children laughing and splashing in the ocean or rivers, lakes, and backyard pools. My favorite is fall, with the full array of color and the fresh chill of the morning and the warmth of sunny afternoons. Winter can be lovely with the sparkling snow dazzling the landscapes, which are sometimes only dismal with tones of gray. Whatever you love about each season can bring you sweet smiles of contentment.

The same seasons, however, often bring on a different perspective – with heavy rains and hurricanes, wildfires, tornadoes, and extreme temperature fluctuations.

The Bible states, “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). These words, along with the verses that follow, were adapted by songwriter Pete Seeger and made popular by The Byrds in the song “Turn! Turn! Turn!” The song tells how there is a season for laughing and crying, living and dying, loving and hating, building and breaking down, warring and peacemaking – all opposites.

However, the Bible states further in the same chapter, “He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: .... I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it.” This message brings us the promise of springtime or renewal, forever. Everything is beautiful in God’s time, not the weather’s. And nothing can be put to it – no turmoil can ever be sent by God to His people.

During the winter of 1993, “The Inaugural Day Storm” hit the Pacific Northwest on January 20. We lived on a wooded lot, and the winds were fierce. My husband and I were awakened in bed when a tree fell. It made us bounce upright. Because the closest trees were outside our bedroom, we moved into the living room where we felt safer.

And we began to pray. I prayed, knowing that God did not bring on these storms but only protection and calm. I prayed to understand that we were safe in His care and that His “everlasting arms of Love” (see the “Christian Science Hymnal,” No. 53) were all around us and around everyone who felt the severe wind that night.

After a while I felt calm and returned to bed. Our two kids, who were in a part of the house not near the trees, had slept through it all. In the morning we saw that a few huge trees had fallen just feet from our house. We did indeed remain safe. After the wind came a huge thunderstorm. But the neighborhood had minimal damage from this severe weather.

Recently during the onslaught of hurricane Irene, a group of us were asked to pray for the folks that might be affected by it. I thought about “hurricane season.” What kind of season can bring such dismay and the possibility of destruction? I don’t believe, as some have said, that it’s people’s thought that brings on nature’s ferocious behavior. I immediately acknowledged that because God is All, in actuality there can be only seasons of love, seasons of trust, seasons of renewal. All are safe with God, just as my family had been almost 20 years earlier during the windstorm. We can all come together in caring brotherhood and sisterhood to help one another see evidence of this fact more clearly.

Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered Christian Science, wrote, “The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind’s creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness – yea, the divine nature – appear in man and the universe never to disappear” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 509). These indeed are the seasons to contemplate – our growth spiritward, our acknowledgment of all being created by Mind, God, and the fact that we live under His divine care, in the season of His eternal love.

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