This season. I’ve heard this phrase a lot in Christian settings recently. ‘Yeah, it’s just for a season though…’, ‘I’m trying to remind myself, it’s just a season.’ I’ve even found myself using it, without stopping to think what I am actually saying! I usually use it when dealing with a stressful moment involving 1, 2 or all 3 of my little people. I know I definitely muttered it to myself during a recent Tesco shop that took 2 hours and 6 toilet visits, with a full trolley of groceries. Fun times.
It’s just a season. Pretty negative language along with the expectation of something better, new, more exciting in the next season that we are pinning our hopes on. Yes it’s good and sometimes necessary to plan ahead, but what is God trying to teach us in the now? In the mess, in the mundane, in the ordinary, in this present season of our lives. Sometimes, while we are busy planning for when God is going to explode into our lives in a new, real and living way, we are missing out on His very real tangible presence in our current walk. Maybe the painful walk, or the lonely walk or the boring walk.
I’m sure the Israelites felt this way when they had ‘a season’ of 40 years of wandering before they got to the long awaited promised land. The land with all the milk and honey. But God had a plan in this time of waiting on Him and His timing. His plan was to reveal Himself and the very character of God, to teach them that sin, their sin, was real and had consequences, to show that He alone is trustworthy, good, long suffering and does not give up on His people. That they are precious to Him, even in their sin, in their ungratefulness, in their need to be the god of their own lives.
God is there in every season. The good, the bad and everything in between. He has a plan. He has a purpose in it. Do we trust Him with His plan?
I’ve come to realise more and more that the lessons I learn in the hard or ‘wandering’ seasons are so valuable to me now. I hear His Holy Spirit more when I’m in that dark season, rather than in the season I wish or thought I should be in by now. I’m eager to listen because I need Him in that moment. And He is faithful to reveal what He wants me to know because He is a good, good Father.
There was a lesson to be learnt in the 6th toilet visit. It was patience.
