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I love mangos. Even with the quirky texture and strange, giant pit in the middle they are still one of my favorite fruits. Amazingly, I can go to the grocery store, pretty much year-round, and pick up a mango or two to enjoy. No, I don’t live in some tropical paradise. I live in North Carolina. (Not exactly the mango capital of the world.) As far as I know, you can’t even grow mangos in North Carolina and yet here they are. I may not fully realize it, but I live in a false reality. It’s nice in some ways; especially when I want a mango! It’s detrimental in others. Though we might be able to ship in mangos to where we live even when they’re out of season, we can’t expect to produce fruit in our lives when WE are out of season. Let me explain…
Much like the leaves on the trees go from green to red, fall off and grow again, there is a rhythm to our lives. The ‘fruit’ we produce in our lives is much the same. Farmers understand that there is a season in which to plant certain crops and a season in which to harvest those crops. Different fruit or grains are planted at different times depending on the season in which they best produce. The ground is made for it. The rains seem to fall at the right times. And the seed seems to know instinctively when its time has come to produce. When that season is recognized and respected, things flow so much more easily than if you try and force it to produce when it is ‘out of season’. You are the same way. (Click Here to read my post on allowing people to change)
Our culture is not big on seasons. We prefer not to wait for anything. We are big on productivity, efficiency and results. We push and drive and forge a way through, regardless if it is natural or not because ‘we want what we want, when we want it.’ While that may be celebrated with bonuses at work or hundreds of Instagram ‘likes’ by our friends, the ‘fruit’ is forced and is not sustainable. It may seem productive at the time, but it is a lie that will ultimately let you down as you start relying on it. We must learn to honor the seasons of life that we are in and work WITH the season and not against it. (Click here to read my post ‘Do You Trust God Enough To Rest)
Maybe in your life or in your church or business you experienced a ‘season’ of tremendous growth and increase. It was exciting and meaningful and everything seemed to be on fire! Then all of the sudden it ‘cooled off’. Sales weren’t as strong. Your friends weren’t as available to spend time with for some reason. And we start to wonder ‘what’s wrong?’ It doesn’t have to mean that anything is wrong. It could be that something very ‘right’ is happening and the season is changing for your good. If the trees never lost their leaves they wouldn’t be able to grow new ones. If a plot of ground is forced to grow crops without a break it loses all of its nutrients and becomes unusable. God even punished the Israelites in the Old Testament for not allowing the land to rest from productivity as He had instructed them, so He sent them out of the land of Israel for the total amount of time that they had forced it to produce ‘out of season.’ God is serious about seasons… so much so that He constructed His Holy calendar to flow with the changing of the seasons. (Click Here to see my posts on the importance of the Hebrew Calendar)
David, the King of Israel, wrote in Psalm 23 that God ‘makes me lie down in green pastures… and restores my soul’. It’s no wonder that God has to make us lie down. We often would not let ourselves stop because of the fear of failure or the pressures of keeping all the plates spinning. Yet, He does make us lie down because He knows what we need more than we do. You’ll only be stuck in the season you are in if you refuse to allow it to change. You can try to keep telling yourself to expect mangos year-round. You can even have them shipped in from out of town to lie to yourself. But the truth is you’ll just constantly be struggling to live out of season… and that is an exhausting way to live. Don’t despise your season, celebrate it for what it is and watch for the changing winds to let you know that a change is on its way. That’s another one of the beauties of seasons… they change. Let it happen and trust that God knows what He is doing. He is for you today, and so am I.
He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season… – Psalm 1:3 ESV
The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.2 He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, 3 he refreshes my soul. – Psalm 23:1-3 NIV
So the message of the LORD spoken through Jeremiah was fulfilled. The land finally enjoyed its Sabbath rest, lying desolate until the seventy years were fulfilled, just as the prophet had said. – 2 Chronicles 36:21 NIV
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