photo by *~Dawn~* via PhotoRee

In my last post about spiritual seasons I said I would do a little research about what happens to trees and plants during autumn and winter. I knew trees and grass and other perennials don't actually die during the winter. What I didn't know is how important the processes are to the health and well-being of the plant/tree the importance of fall and winter. Not just for plants and trees, but for ourselves, spiritually speaking.

Leaves changing color and fluttering to the ground are probably the most obvious sign of autumn. Responding to the shortening hours of daylight, deciduous trees begin a process of self-preservation. Leaves are fragile in comparison to branches and trunks, unable to survive freezing temperatures. The tree shuts off the supply of chlorophyll (which supplies the green color). The yellows and oranges and reds are the result of other chemicals already present in the leaves, or produced during the light changes in the autumn.

photo by ganzoman	via PhotoRee

In other words, the tree senses what's coming, and begins to prepare. It stores food produced in the leaves during the summer to sustain itself, stocking up a "plant pantry" to feed upon throughout the winter. Although trees appear dead, the winter period is called dormancy. Similar to hibernation in many animals, plants are resting, relying on the food they've stored up during the spring and summer. Attempts to force growth during this season (fertilizing, for example) may actually harm the plant.

And something else is going on during those long, cold, months of winter ... the growth to come in the next spring and summer is protected and nurtured within the bud. Growth that is already prepared, already expected, already established. When "environmental conditions" are right, those buds will swell and blossom into the new life of spring.

photo by enggul via PhotoRee

Are you fretting over the dropping of your spiritual "leaves"? Fearful that spring will never come, and if it does, you'll be left behind?
Don't fret or fear. Start looking for the buds of new life. What "swells" in your heart when you think, talk, or hear about it? What thoughts and dreams and activities stir within you like a warm breeze? Yes, they may seem to be entirely different from anything you've done before, but that's all right ... God likes to do new things.

Meanwhile, enjoy the season you're in, whatever season it may be, because God has a plan for you, and that plan is good!

Sometimes, just when you think you're really "losing it" (like maybe you took a wrong turn and are now limping down an endless stretch of deserted country road) you stumble upon another traveler on the same path, one with greater wisdom about the journey or just in the same place, and you're comforted. That happened to me today. Bonnie Gray's "What Season of Faith Are You Walking In?" post at Faith Barista spoke to my heart.

Our seasons of faith – where we're "at" in our walk with God, in our prayer lives, in our daily conduct – are subject to change just as surely as the seasons outside the window. And that's all right. Throughout the course of our lives we walk through many seasons. Why wouldn't the same thing be true in our spiritual walk?

It may be a spiritual season of springtime for you right now ... full of new life, fresh growth and revelation, warmth and the rain of the Holy Spirit. All excitement and thrills and power. I'm thinking of a young couple I know. They're having spring. Running to and fro from meeting to conference to meeting, reveling in the presence of God, excited about things to come. They are sowing toward their future in word and action.

Or you might be having summer ... bright, warm days filled with harvesting the good things sown in the spring, enjoying the juicy fruits of righteousness and basking in fellowship with others and with God. This is the season of maturity, of fullness and rejoicing, of moving past just being blessed to being a blessing.

Perhaps you've entered a spiritual autumn. Things seem a bit dry. Everything "looks" different. I think of Solomon writing Ecclesiastes, questioning and testing and examining. Parts of your spiritual experience that were lush and vibrant a season ago have withered away to dead stalks. There's a chill in the air and a sense of impending change. As Bonnie put it, fall is a time of "letting go." I'm about to have to "let go" of my garden, as we've dropped down into the 30s at night here and my squash and tomatoes have already suffered the chill. It's time to put my garden "to bed" for the season. From a spiritual perspective, we "put to bed" our ministry as pastors in July.

Maybe it's spiritual winter for you right now. Everything appears frozen, dead, unwelcoming, and harsh. There's little light and lots of long, empty hours of darkness. Fellowship with others all but disappears. You want to hibernate, nestle yourself away with your Abba and avoid the cold, hard world outside. On the inside, there's light and life and warmth, but it's locked within. Think of Paul, writing to the church at Philippi from his prison cell, life within and apparent death without. I wonder if, at the time, Paul felt like he was in a spiritual winter?

For some strange reason I think I've been led to believe the only spiritual seasons of value are spring and summer. After all, those are the seasons we applaud in our churches and encourage from our pulpits. Watch someone enter an autumn, or worse, a winter season, in his or her spirituality and the questions come. "Is so-and-so backslid? Are they falling away from the church? What's wrong with him/her?" Maybe, just maybe, NOTHING AT ALL. Perhaps the person is simply in a different season.

Just because the leaves fall off the tree in autumn doesn't mean the tree is sick. 
Snow that covers the grass and turns it brown doesn't indicate the death of the lawn. 

What if there's something important, something critical, to be accomplished during a spiritual autumn and winter? The God I know and love wouldn't have created entire seasons that produce nothing.

So what is happening in nature during fall and winter that we're ignorant of? And does that analogy apply to us spiritually?

I'll be mulling this one over for a day or two. I'll share what I discover in my next post.
In the meantime, check out some of the other posts linked up to this subject at Faith Barista...