When seasons change, things may get ugly

This was last week. Last week fall was my favourite season. The colours were at their best, and everywhere you looked there was another glorious scene to salivate over. But then October faded and cued November's cold rain and powerful gales. Today, in my yard, I am fighting despair as I stand almost knee deep in leaves.

Yesterday I could feel the elation of last week seeping out as I drove past a patch of bare forest, naked and brown. I felt sorry for the trees, all stripped of their radiance. Then the thought struck me that the woods were simply in transition. This is temporary, and how lovely is it going to be in our next season, when all that brown will be blanketed in dazzling white and be made beautiful once again?!

Transition in life is often a time when things don't look very pretty. It's an in-between stage where, like the trees, your old wardrobe is being taken away before you get your new clothes.
You have to say good-bye to life as you've known it, but you haven't yet figured out how to live your new life. It feels very awkward and ungraceful, like you're all knees and elbows. It involves a lot of letting go, which can feel almost like dying. You poured the best of yourself into that last season; how do you just turn your palms up now? 

In transition, you realize how minuscule your control over life actually is. Things you thought you owned, or had control of, were things really just given for a time. Now, for better or worse, that time is up. It's time to let go, move on, stop looking back. Tell those knees and elbows to turn your self around.

I was reading in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians today. The passage reminded me that although I am so limited in my ability to control my life, there is a good and sovereign God who I can trust with everything, including the things I have to let go of in this transition. He is in control and he has been working out his plan on his own volition, without my urging, reminding, or prompting, for thousands of years.

His plan is a plan to do the ultimate good.  He can and will do what I will never, ever, ever be able to do. Part of this plan is that he is going to take this natural, weak, perishable, and mortal human and make it into a spiritual person who is immortal, imperishable, powerful, and glorious (1 Cor 15:42-44). A large part of this plan has already been worked out (also without any input from me!). The final thing on God's list to take care of: defeat death (1 Cor 15:26).

I tell you, I have never had anything close to that on my to-do list! In other words, chill, feeble human, cause he's got this!

It's only November, but by the gray skies and bite in the air, I know snowflakes are going to start to falling soon. There are a few more leaves that need to give up their stubborn grip, but I know that the winter is going to be beautiful.