To everything there is a season. A time for every purpose under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3:1

The birds are back in  town! Flocks of finches and other small birds arrived just as March came through the calendar door. While a few nuthatches braved the winter to pick at the frozen pine bark, we haven’t had very many birds this winter.  And then one morning – dozens of them filled the top of the snag on the driveway like a crest of feathers and wings.  They soon found the feeder I’ve kept  filled with sunflower seeds. It’s been a wonderful sight in the mornings as I sip my coffee and slip off the night. Dan provides them with fresh daily water because birds prefer to drink out of the bird bath, not bathe in it.

The  seeds scattered onto the ground has also brought a dozen or more wild turkeys who hang out for the freebies. If God has blessed the birds of the air with  graceful flight, He skipped out on the turkeys who waddle their oversized bodies on skinny legs. Still they’re a surprising, comical sight which makes me smile whenever  they show up. To my mind, spring has arrived despite the snow, ice and still cold nights. Daylight savings time came on Saturday; the vernal  or spring equinox arrives  in a few days on March 20. I can  see  green shoots of bulbs  poking  through the warming earth around the house.  Birds and emerging plants testify to the coming spring , to the cycle of  seasons which God has ordained since He created our planet.

I am thankful for the end of winter for it’s not been an easy season for anyone I know. We’ve been prone to cabin fever and arthritic bones. The icy streets were treacherous. Good friends went south for the season But more than that, the last two plus years are more like William Shakespeare’s “winter of our discontent”,  a prolonged cold  season beset by clouds of change, confusion and upheaval in those we love, in life suddenly gone weird and in our  troubled souls.   I long for extended seasons of peace in our family and community.  I long for seasons of light and joy in the world  which  chooses  winter bleakness and darkness. I long for the Song of Songs rejoicing in spring and summer’s blossoms and fruits. I desperately pray for men to remember: the seasons are in God’s hands, not theirs.

The  third chapter of Ecclesiastes describes  life’s seasons as contrasts. A Pete Seeger song (“Turn, turn, turn”) based on the Scripture  became identified with the turbulence and changing culture of the 60’s. The Biblical misappropriation was never  intended  to elevate God’s providential authority over life’s seasons. Instead the lyrics advocated that nothing was permanent, especially God. A Wisdom chapter of the Bible was reworked into nascent postmodernism

I read Ecclesiastes now and have experienced  almost all  of the times the Preacher describes.  The message is convicting but the real message for me is  verse 12.

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.”

When the birds return and when they leave, when the green shoots have bloomed bright yellow and when they wither away; when youth turns  aged and finally into dust,  when we’re finally called home from this season of mortality  to God is the  Unchanging One may we find that truly everything was beautiful in its time. Our Father  holds every turn of my life and yours before Him  through  and in Jesus,  the Holy Incarnate One who also walked through  every  season  of His earthly life. Just like us.