WAYFINDING Part 2: Every Season Offers Gifts and Tasks

WAYFINDING: Navigating Life God

Part 2: Every Season Offers Gifts and Tasks

One of the great challenges of being human is that we are always becoming. We are not finished products. We are shaped by our experiences, our relationships, our choices, our losses, our joys, and most importantly, by the ongoing work of God in our lives.

Yet one of the things I have noticed, both in my own journey and in walking alongside others, is how easily we can become impatient with the season we are in. We look backwards and long for what has been. Or sideways, comparing ourself with where others seem to be. We look ahead and imagine that fulfilment will finally come when we reach the next thing.

But Scripture offers us a different way of seeing time.

The writer of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is “a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” This doesn’t mean every season is easy or that everything that happens is good. Life includes suffering, disappointment, injustice and loss. But it does remind us that God is not absent from time. He is present and at work within it.

Every season carries its own invitations, its own gifts, its own work. We see this pattern throughout Scripture. Moses spent years in the wilderness before he stood before Pharaoh. Those years were not wasted time. They were part of his formation. The shepherd became a leader because God was shaping something in him before he ever carried public responsibility.

David was anointed king as a young man, yet he spent many years in hidden places before he sat on the throne. The wilderness years formed qualities that power alone could never create. Mary carried a promise before she saw its fulfilment. She had to trust God’s word in the space between announcement and reality. Even Jesus Himself lived through seasons. Luke tells us that He grew “in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” The Son of God embraced the process of human development. He did not rush from birth to public ministry. He lived, learned, worked, waited and grew. Perhaps we should not be surprised that God continues to work this way with us.

Human development researchers have long recognised that different stages of life bring different tasks and opportunities for growth. While no two people follow exactly the same pathway, there does seem to be wisdom in recognising that we are continually being formed. There are seasons when we learn dependence and trust and others when we discover identity and responsibility. Seasons when we build, create, serve and contribute, and seasons when we are invited to let go, deepen, integrate and offer the wisdom gained through experience.

The challenge is that we often want the fruit without embracing the formation that produces it. We want David’s throne without David’s wilderness. Joseph’s influence without Joseph’s hidden years. We want resurrection without the cross. But God is not only interested in where we end up. He is deeply involved in who we are becoming along the way.

This raises important questions for our journey. What season am I in right now? What is this season inviting me to learn? What needs to grow in me? What do I need to take hold of and what do I need to release? What is God forming that I can’t yet see?

We will struggle if we’re trying to live faithfully in the wrong season. If we’re carrying expectations from a previous chapter or trying to force open a door that belongs to a future one. Wisdom involves learning to receive the grace of the present. This does not mean passively accepting everything. Faith is not resignation. There are times when God calls us to change, to step out, to challenge injustice, or to begin something new.

But even change requires discernment. The question is not simply, “What do I want next?” The deeper question is, “Lord, what are You doing in me, and what are You inviting me into now?”  

This is not something that’s come naturally to me. I get impatient and frustrated. But thankfully, God is gracious, and I’ve discovered that some of the best His work in me has happened in seasons I’d rather have avoided. Waiting seasons. Transition seasons. Very challenging seasons. The kind of season where old identities get loosened so that new things can emerge.

I’ve found God’s invitation is not to rush through those seasons, but to be still and know that He is God, to lean into His presence and goodness, listening, waiting attentively, allowing Him to displace my anxiety and impatience with His peace and reassurance (several times a day sometimes). My instinct is usually to rush past discomfort, move on from disorientation as quickly as I can, forgetting that God is at least as interested and engaged in shaping my being, as He is in directing my doing and my going. 

God is the potter and I am the clay, he forms me according to his will, not the other way around. God the potter makes good work. He takes as long as it takes to shape me, make me, according to His will. I don’t know about you, but I regularly need reminding that my part is sometimes, in fact often, to simply trust Him and be still.

Some questions you might like to ponder as you’re getting your bearings this week:

·      What season of life am I currently inhabiting?

·      What might this season be inviting me to learn, release or embrace?

·      Am I trying to hurry into a future season or return to a previous one?

·      What has God been forming in me through this season?

·      What might faithfulness look like here and now?