“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.”
- Ecclesiastes 3:1
I was so ready for a change, and it finally happened. When I opened a brand-new tube of toothpaste recently, I rejoiced. The night before my increasingly arthritic fingers painfully squeezed the last little bit I could manage to get out of the old tube. Even if there was enough left for one more brushing, I had had enough. I was ready for a change, a fresh start, and when it finally arrived it lifted my spirits, it brightened my day.
Ordinarily I would not be so philosophical about such a simple matter as a tube of toothpaste, except this just happened to coincide with the long-awaited arrival of cooler weather and some welcome rainfall that finally broke the extreme summer heat and drought we had endured for weeks on end. We were ready for a change, it finally happened – and we rejoiced.
Life is like a box of chocolates, as Forrest Gump famously described. But to me life can sometimes be like a toothpaste tube which starts out full and fresh, until we use it down to the last squeeze. And just as the early signs of autumn have refreshed our spirits, I can see it coming already, sometime just beyond Thanksgiving I will become so weary from raking and bagging leaves from beneath our giant beautiful oak trees that I can hardly wait for those cold winter days when I can relax beside the fireplace. And of course, winter will eventually wear out its welcome too as we long for the first signs of spring.
Other seasons, besides the annual ones, also come and go. I recall those seasons when the family would slowly begin to shrink. One grandparent would pass, then another, then our parents, diminishing the size of our family gatherings. Then, almost without realizing it our children grew up, got married, and began having children of their own. Suddenly the dining room table was crowded again with the noise of new little voices, chatter, and laughter. It was time for a change, it finally happened – and we rejoiced.
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.” So, the seasons of life, like those of nature, are gifts from God that define the work we have each been given to do, until like a tube of toothpaste it is time for a change – and we rejoice.