Seasons and cycles

Summer is winding down.  School has reopened.  Kids are sporting new backpacks, new shoes, and new threads.  So as we see the lazy, hazy days of summer decline into shorter and shorter bursts of sun and play, we realize that even though there is so much "newness" abounding around us in the stores, shops, various market places, it is also a time of endings.

The warmth of the sun comes to an end as the days get shorter and there is less sunlight to warm us.  The leaves on the plants begin to dry and fall and annual growth plants die out.  Soon the Fall winds will blow and with them will come chills and barrenness.  Then Winter sets in.  The winter of our year.  And the winter of our lives.

We should all realize that there is a cycle never ending that begins and ends regularly.  The cycle of the seasons, the cycle of plants, the cycle of growth, the cycle of life.

Facing the winter of our lives is most assuredly the most difficult that we are ever confronted with.  Sometimes it is the winter and the end of our loved one's life that we watch.  Sometimes our own season of living is  beginning to cycle through toward that inevitable Winter.  But there is a time for everything under the sun as is written:

To every thing there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 

A time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.... Ecclesiates 3:

So you see, whether it is the ending of the cycle of the seasons of the earth - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter - or the season of our own lives, there is a TIME determined that we should be born and that we should die.  There is a time to plant a seed and a time to pluck up that which was planted.