Ecclesiastes 3:1

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven….

Life ebbs and flows through seasons of life. A daughter becomes a wife and lover, then a mother and grandmother, and a widow. Each season is filled with joys and sorrows, wins and losses, beginnings and ends. Each stretch of time is a unique gift from God and is always under his control. 

Solomon describes the seasons of our lives with a list of opposites made up of twenty-eight items in fourteen pairings. This effective literary technique is called a merism. It includes the opposite extremes and everything that happens in between. For instance, Solomon says there is a time to live and a time to die, reminding us that life has a starting line, a finish line, and a great race in between.

Recently, Lori and I had breakfast with a couple whom we have known for a long time. They were in town because their daughter (and youngest child) was beginning her freshman year of college. The wife came to Pittsburgh thirty years ago as a foreign exchange student. She was an atheist until God grabbed her heart and loving “sponsors” (who became her spiritual parents) showed her what it looked like to love Jesus. The husband had been a Muslim until God transformed his life and gave him a heart to share Jesus. We reflected over the years, thanking God for his goodness and wondering where the time had gone. They left us to say goodbye to their daughter (believe me, that is an emotional time) and then head back home to a new season of life. 

We are all on the journey of a life season with a beginning and an end. That’s why we must be jealous for every day until we enter the final eternal season in God’s presence and enjoy him forever. 

Father, please remind us today that life is not one long season but many stretches that start and finish. Help us live every season of our lives in a way that honors you. Help us to be students each season, learning and preparing for the next. And help us to mature each season, making a more significant impact for you in the following season. In Jesus’ name. Amen.