There’s something about Spring that makes us want to shake off the old and paint everything bright and new. It’s a cyclical thing, this restless itch to take down the curtains and vacuum into corners and redecorate the bedroom. Fortunately, just noticing the recurrence of that effect keeps me from spending boatloads of money on re-doing the house every year. I really do like my home and feel comfortable in it, so I can content myself with a thorough cleaning and rearranging, knowing it is just the change of seasons at work.  But that inner energy is worth harnessing, can be useful elsewhere if I am not afraid to let it root into dark closets and throw up the shades on musty rooms of the soul.

A youth pastor from the UK wrote in his devotional this week that the seasons of our life are valuable, even purposeful– orchestrated by God to do much-needed housecleaning in our minds and hearts. He pointed out that when circumstances change radically in the everyday, it forces us out of the mind-numbing routine, jolts us out of the ruts we tend to wear down into life. New seasons “awaken our spiritual values…challenge us with the realities of life and death…help us to look at our Christian commitment and connection…help us look at what God would have us do with our lives.” An energizing opportunity, if we can accept it for that.

The One who set the sun and stars in space and decreed that seasons change; the One who keeps the world turning in its place, and the miracle chain of life and death at work in sea and earth and sky– He is the One who holds my days and knows every one of them. Dare I believe that He marks this season of my life with just as much purpose and design? King David wrote it down: “How precious to me are your thoughts,God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.” (Psalm 139:17-18) 

What if the season of life we are going through right now is God’s opportunity to speak to us, shake out the curtains and open up the closets of our hearts, set some issues of life and death before us? What is here for me to learn, in the busyness…or the solitude…or the seeking…or the pain? What do I need to grieve and let go of, so that something else can live? And what if all the painful digging up is only loosening the soil of my heart for something new to grow, shifting the boundaries of my little world to stretch it bigger? If I could open up the eyes of my spirit to see the Wind of change blowing through, could I catch a glimpse of His purposes for me, of what He wants to accomplish in me?

We rest in the faith that You are at work through every long Winter, and it will again pass into Spring; we hold on to the hope that Spring will come and new life will sprout under life-giving rain. “You, God, are my God,earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.” (Psalm 63:1) Stir up our souls till we long for You to make everything new, in this season of life that comes from Your hand.

“Peace be still, You are near;
There’s nowhere we can go
That You won’t shine redemption’s light,
Our guilt withdrawn.

As You rise, we come alive;
The grave has lost, the old is gone,
And You’re making all things new…” (All Things New,Elevation Worship)