A New Season

Here in the UK spring has arrived. The sun has a gentle warmth to it, the evenings are lighter, and spring flowers have dared peek above the soil and unfurl their petals. It's a beautiful thing.

It has got me thinking about the seasons and about the seasons of our lives. Few of us fear the change of the seasons from winter to spring, or summer to autumn, just as few of us fear other cycles of nature - for example, as we move from daytime to evening, or as the tides turn. We acknowledge that these changes are 'natural' and that all is well although dramatic change is taking place around us.

I wonder why then we fear the changing seasons of our lives. If the God that holds the world in his hands is also the God who watches over me, what do I have to be afraid of? If this God, who created day and night, also created me and is familiar with every change I will encounter, can't I rest in his love?

I love that the changing seasons of our lives are acknowledged right in the heart of the Bible, in the book of Ecclesiastes:

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

What this says to me is that we will have change in our lives, we will be required to do different things, in different ways, in different places. More than this - the changing seasons of our lives are essential, and our loving God will use them - to show us new things, to show us more of him, to heal us, to give us space to serve - in which ever way we are called to.

Someone said to me recently, 'God has gone ahead of you today', and of course he had. He has lovingly prepared the way we should go and reached his hand out, taking ours, to gently guide us along that path, each and every day.

Can any of our 'big' changes be bigger than the changing of winter to spring? If God can manage this change pretty successfully, year in and year out, don't you think he can also take you and I through the major events of our lives - however turbulent?

I wonder if today we can take a new look at the changing seasons of our lives. Today, I'm not rowing out onto a stormy sea with waves crashing around me and no sense of what direction I should go in. Rather, what I am asked to do today is enter the warm, loving embrace of the one who knows this new season inside out - to give him my fears and to trust that he is holding me. Today he holds you close, just as he does me.

Why write a blog?

I've considered writing a blog before, but thought it to be a bit arrogant! Why would anyone want to read my thoughts? Isn't it a bit self-centred and conceited to assume that anyone else would be interested?

Lately though, I've felt I've had more and more to say. Not because I'm an expert or I know it all, but the very opposite - because I've realised I've lots to learn and lots of things are opening up to me. Then I came across the idea of an abundance mentality in Stephen Covey's excellent book - 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People'. The abundance mentality says that there is plenty for everyone - if someone shines, in my workplace, my social circle, my family, it takes absolutely nothing away from me. And if I shine, it does not make any person around me less.We can all shine - there is plenty to go around and more besides.

In contrast, the scarcity mentality says there is not enough for us all. It says that if I am more, someone else has to be less - we are competing with one another.

It has struck me how we can have a scarcity mentality without being conscious of it. In fact aren't we brought up in a school system with an underlying assumption of scarcity? Someone has to be at the top of the class and someone has to be at the bottom, we can't all be at the top!

So, how do we shine? By letting out what is inside of us perhaps, our gifts. These might be our abilities and skills, they might be the things we can do with our brain or hands, they might be generous, kind or loving aspects of our personality, they might be a giving heart or a warm personality. If our gifts have been given to us, surely they haven't been given to us so that we can hide them away. Aren't we called to use them?

I read the following quote:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us… Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you… And as we let our own light shine , we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” (Marianne Williamson - 'A Return to Love')

So if shining is the natural and right use of the gifts we have been given, if when we shine it takes absolutely nothing away from anyone else, and in fact gives them permission to shine also, why shouldn't we shine?

Shining for me does not mean 'look at me - I've got this sorted!', it simply means 'I've received something that is good - I want to share it with you'.

I hope you, anyone who reads this blog, enjoys it and recognises that they too have permission to shine!