The Rev. Thomas R. Cook
Season to Season
Our recent and beautiful snowfall reminded me that a look outside and at the ordinary calendar will reveal that we have headed into the season of winter, where we will stay for some time to come. The seasons are rather uniform in their timing, if not in their expressions. We can count on several months of winter, then spring, then summer… you get the point.
Not so with the calendar of the Church. Our seasons vary readily in this time of the year, as we seek to sanctify time, to recognize its holiness. We retell the stories of Christian faith just by the way we experience the movement of time. While now it is winter outside, it is the season after the Epiphany in our churches. It is a time to remember the ancient prophecy that through the children of Israel all the world would be blessed. That blessing we call by the name Jesus. Yet the season of Christmas has hardly gone by, and Lent (beginning with Ash Wednesday, February 6), is just around the corner… then Easter, then Pentecost, then Advent, and, once again, Christmas.
Sure, we get older, but the story of our hope remains fresh
We experience time in a linear fashion. We move along the calendar day by day, month by month, year by year, the past behind us, the future unknown and before us. We begin young and, given sufficient time, we end old. It is, therefore, like setting forth on a journey in a straight line, moving out, and never returning to when we began. Time is, as we say, “spent.” But faith is another matter. The story of our faith may be more akin to the traveler who sets out in a straight line, staying the course until the earth brings her back around again to the place where she began. Our seasons of faith guide us from beginning to beginning again, until, in God’s time this story is finally told, once and for all. Sure, we get older, but the story of our hope remains fresh: God is revealed in the world, Christ knows and forgives our sins, we are born again in faith and hope in the Resurrection of the Dead, and time continues on in the providence of God until we need it no more.