Beautiful in His time

We speak of seasons mostly as obstacles — things to get through on the way back to how life should be. Ecclesiastes corrects the frame: to every thing there is a season. The seasons are not interruptions of the design. They are the design, purposed, each with its own work to do.

That means the current one — whatever it is: the waiting, the rebuilding, the caring, the quiet — is not wasted time before real life resumes. Something is being done in it that could not be done in any other season, however little of it you can see from inside.

And then the promise that gathers all the seasons up: He hath made every thing beautiful in his time. His time — not ours, which is the hard part; beautiful — which is the astonishing part. Fruit forced early is bitter, and God forces nothing. Trust the calendar of the One who has never once been late, whatever the waiting has whispered.