Seasons
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven … Ecclesiastes 3: 1
Cold winds and snow, or moderating heat of southern climates in winter, remind us at year’s end of the seasons of our lives. How each person navigates those seasons is something to think about. At the end of our journey, when we look back, what will we see? Will we see abundant fruit? Will our produce be too meager to both leave behind an impact or store eternal treasure? Each of us has potential bud, bloom, and fruit to yield at harvest and leave an impact on the world we pass through. Each of us have an eternal storehouse, as well.
True fruit is not fun and fame; neither is true fruit possessions or positions. When winter white fades into eternity, the only thing of value is something money can never buy. An eternal harvest includes:
… The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5: 22-23
Not only is there no law “against such things,” but also these are a full harvest of values destined to last throughout eternity.
The Christmas season is a good reminder about these values. Jesus, who embodied this Spiritual fruit, enables us when we trust in Him, not as a pretty little baby-in-the-manger story, but a Savior hanging on a cross for our redemption from sin. By His resurrection He enables us to bear these fruits both now and throughout eternity when we place our complete trust for Hope in eternal life.
Challenge: Are you satisfied with your personal orchard?
Prayer: Father in heaven, help me to grow a great spiritual harvest for Your glory and the good of those I encounter day by day.
Seasons of Life
Life hits hard at every stage;
Life’s like seasons in its age.
Birth is springtime in the bud
Yielding bloom and hopeful blood.
Youth blends in with summer growth;
Love grows from the marriage oath;
Plantings yield their fruits of work;
Harvest looms and frost days lurk;
Time, then, comes to use the stores
Of the work and harvest chores;
Winter’s white and chill appears
Telling us to cast our fears
When our seasons then will blend
Calling us to our great end.
Death is but the painful toll
To a springtime’s novel goal.
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June E. Titus
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