The spring equinox is that time of year when we move the clocks ahead an hour and start to look forward to the summer routine that we are accustomed to. But it’s not the same all over the world, even though we tend to apply our own remembrances and customs to other areas of the planet.
For example, our family was recently involved in a church trivia contest and one of the questions was when the warmest months of the year were if you lived on the Equator. We got it wrong… We forgot that if we lived on the Equator, the sun would pass right above us twice per year – the spring equinox and the fall equinox… We didn’t think it through. And that is the trouble with some of the things that we are used to. We don’t think about what changes we may experience if we lived another part of the world. But in some ways, I am grateful for the familiarity of where we live.
In fact, With the changes of the seasons, I always think of my Grandpa teaching me, as a young boy, the importance of the seasons and how things line up with the Bible. Grandpa had a tough childhood. He had a younger sister, Marie, who died when Grandpa was six years old, in 1900. Then, his mother, a Christian Scientist, died when Grandpa was twelve. His Dad eventually remarried but with the blended family, my great-grandfather couldn’t provide for all the kids as an engineer on the Pennsylvania Railroad. So Grandpa left home as a young teenager and started to provide for himself.
As Grandpa grew up, he renounced the Christian Science faith, having watched several of his family members die during the very formative years of his childhood, without any medical intervention. He made the decision to put his faith in something, in his opinion, much more reliable. Jesus became the thing that he depended on.
Grandpa also learned to love the land and I remember as a child how many times I saw him planting or talking about the soil and the changes of the seasons. It gave him a sense of order, something that made sense in a world that seemed all too difficult to navigate without embracing God’s creation. Years later, after he was established, he actually bought a 1600 acre farm in Jonesville, MI where he could get away from Chicago and relax in creation of the Creator. Another one of his sisters, who had survived her early years, lived on the farm with her family and actually planted the acreage each year.
Although my memories are somewhat hazy, I actually visited the farm as a young boy and it was my only trip there. My younger brothers were there more often and Ken, our youngest brother, spent a summer there once, as I recall.
Grandpa said that God had a reason for the order of the seasons. Summer was the time of great growth and the season when things matured. Fall, of course, was the time of harvest and the rewards of hard work during the summer months. It became my favorite time of year. While many people think about winter as a time of darkness, and sometimes even think of it as “dead”, Grandpa always taught me that winter was the time of rest, when the earth was re-charged and mankind took a break from the work of the growing season and the harvest. I always, to this day, think of winter as a time of rest, waiting until we can once again see spring, the time of everything made new and the cycle of the seasons once again begins. It is a trustworthy, reliable way to look at the seasons, at least in the Midwest where we live.
While many people, especially as they get older, dislike the cold and the snow and the inconveniences that come with winter, I enjoy the various attributes of the different seasons. I cling to the things that I learned about God’s creation during my youth.
So I am excited as we start a new cycle of life this spring. Come to think of it, I’m very glad that we don’t live on the Equator. I would miss the surprises of our lives here throughout the seasons. In fact, we have already seen some of the surprises of new growth; hyacinths and daffodils among others this spring. Our verse for tonight is from Solomon’s writings in Ecclesiastes. He tells us, in Ecclesiastes 3:1, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…”
My encouragement this evening is that my experience bears out that Solomon was right. Not only in the physical change of seasons, as we are now observing, but throughout our chronological lives, we go through different “seasons” as well. The Holy Spirit shows us different applications of God’s Word in our lives as we age. My prayer is that we will be aware of God’s sense of order and growth throughout our lives, to the glory of God Himself. Have a great day in the Lord, grace and peace…