Seasonal Changes 

As the autumn days shorten and we respond to the new season with changing routines, and as the covid restrictions lessen, we emerge into a season of renewed opportunities and challenges. In our humanity we often find change unsettling, and sometimes uncomfortable, and so resist new circumstances that God wishes to call us to, due to fear or laziness.  The Lord’s Prayer accepts that there will be change, as we pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done’, but we are then emboldened as we go on to pray ‘for yours is the power and glory’ - but may secretly hope that in His will is that there will be no change.
 
Daniel lived through many changes. Born in Judah, enslaved and deported to Babylon, educated to be an advisor to the King Nebuchadnezzar, he was then faced with an unreasonable demand to interpret a dream that the king could not recall, with the threat that failure to deliver would mean execution! With God’s help Daniel interpreted the dream - and Daniels’s response in thanking God was to acknowledge that:
 
He changes times and seasons; He sets up kings and deposes them (Daniel 2 v 21)
 
God does not play games with us - calling us and then abandoning us. Our timeless father encapsulates us in time, which thankfully is what keeps everything from happening at once, and so we can focus on opportunities offered to us in each season. As the seasons are in His hands, we can embrace new experiences and opportunities with confidence and joy knowing they are part of our Christian life’s fascinating journey.
 
The hymnwriter penned:
 
Through all the changing scenes of life
In trouble and in joy
The praises of my God shall still
My heart and tongue employ.
 
Fear Him ye saints and you will then
Have nothing else to fear
Make you His service your delight
He’ll make your wants His care
 
Solomon in Ecclesiastes commented that:
 
There is a time for everything … (Ch. 3 v1)
 
Embrace this new season and today, to use its gift of time wisely and flexibly