There seems to be a time between seasons that is ugly. As the trees have lost all their color we know that Autumn is gone. Yet all we see is brown and gray, and all we feel is the empty seasonlessness on the skin. The air is too warm to feel winter, and too cold to see spring on the horizon.

I used to get quite homesick as a child. My world was centered around the predictable order of my home and family. To leave that home left me with an empty and lost feeling. No matter how enjoyable the outside world was, I could think of nothing else than wanting to return to my home and to things familiar. I have similar feelings between seasons. It is as the fallen leaves of autumn lay on the forest floor empty of color, I ache to return to the familiarity of fall, or to move on to the predictability of winter.

We all desire order and predictability in some way or another. We hate waiting for God to move in the midst of placelessness; Sitting leaves us vulnerable and helpless. But as the the oak faithfully sits bare in the late autumn knowing that he will be carried through another season, we need also to quiet and still ourselves and allow God to do the moving and speaking, even during times of unpredictability and order.

As you hovered over the chaotic waters at the beginning,

hover over the placelessness of my soul.

When I feel homesick for direction and order,open the buds you desire in me.
Be present to me great choreographer of time, even between the seasons.

As the Michigan temperatures begin to plummet, frost has found its way into the area. The falling temperatures usher in many good things like the beautiful array of colors and the gift snowflakes, but the coming winter also brings much death, like the death of all my friends that creepeth along the ground. So, like a frantic mother looking for her lost child, I began wading through thigh deep pastures, desperately searching for brother mantis, and the corn spiders that fascinated me so much. However, with much disappointment my hunt was fruitless, not finding even a carcass to mourn beside. A pasture that was once busy with the hustle and bustle of the insect metropolis now lays lifeless and gray.

Hopeful that the inevitable fate of death would somehow pass away from my fruitful friend, I brought my tomato plant indoor the night before the frost came. I thought that perhaps the remaining blossoms could somehow give me just one more tomato, and the single sickly fruit clinging nearby would somehow magically turn red. I have found that even bringing it in every night it begins to whither, as is lacking the sunshine that it really needs to flourish. Its time of harvest is past, and its time of life is fleeting. I am reminded of the depressing mantra of Ecclesiastes; “…A time to live, and a time to die.” I should dispose of the plant and perhaps replace it with a Halloween or Thanksgiving decoration, but I do not, and I continue to look to it expecting what is inevitably not going to happen.

Just the other day I saw a truck traveling on the highway in the lane beside me; it was carrying two tombs. Expanding the entire width of the truck’s bed, these simple concrete boxes created a gapers block in traffic. While people die as often as they are born, this simple transit was business as usual for the driver. Yet, there was something profound in seeing tombs racing down the highway at seventy mile per hour. One could not help but gaze at these two things, and create a slow of traffic behind them in the process. I immediately wanted to know the story behind the tombs. Were they for someone special? How did they die? Was it natural causes? Was it a car accident that happened while gawking at tombs in the lane beside them? I did not have any of these questions answered, and as quickly as I could, I sped up and raced past the truck.

Whether it is the empty shell of an insect, a miserable looking tomato plant, or the sight of a tomb that’s only purpose is to hold the corpse of a human; death has a certain sting to it. We as humans do not like to confront it, because it brings pain, confusion, and doubt. We like to live in comfort, having things figured out completely, and have strong convictions about everything in life. It often takes things like highway tombs, dead insects, and withering plants to force us to look at death, face to face and eye to eye. It is after this one on confrontation with the very ugly thing in the world, that some choose to cower and turn the other way, but others can stand firm in their dissatisfaction and spit in the face of death himself while saying “where is your sting, and where is your victory?”

If I come before my Maker and my Lord allows me to pick a season for eternity, it will be springtime. It is springtime that creation is at its best, and the possibilities are endless. I am convinced that the Church is a people of springtime. It is within Her that the people of God can breathe in the fresh spring air in the midst of a bitter winter. As winter inches closer and closer, and as my friends begin to die away, I take hope in God’s faithfulness to bring us through yet another winter and breathe back life into the gray. In a world surrounded by the monotony of death, there is a message of life that can satisfy the appetite for spring hidden within everyone.

Creator God, the one who breathes life into the world,breathe yet again, for our lungs are suffocating without you.God of winter, spring, summer, and fall,instill in us all the vision of spring, and the life that you have promised in the midst of death.