Seasons of Life: Sowing, Pruning, and Harvesting in Your Current Chapter

“Do what is appropriate to the season.”

This simple phrase holds profound wisdom. We think of seasons as the natural progression of spring, summer, fall, and winter. Life, too, has seasons, each demanding different actions and reflections.

Spring, with its promise of renewal, reminds us that every season has its purpose. It’s a time for planting, both literally and metaphorically.

Solomon reminds us “For everything, there is a season.” Paul speaks of “kairos” in Galatians 6. It describes season time, opportunity, and moments to act accordingly.

A few verses earlier, Paul reminds us of the order of the farm. We reap what we sow.

As I knock on the door of Moses‘ “threescore and ten” (Psalm 90:10), I am forced to answer three questions.

What do I want to do? In retirement, I have many choices. In younger years, time created its own form of stress. Now, choice does the same.

What am I able to do? Bodies slow down, as my knee reminded me of that this year. The season determines what is available.

But the third is what tugs at me the most.  What is appropriate now? Doing what I want or what I can may not be what is best. If I “do what is appropriate to the season,” what is that?

I am resolving that issue in three areas.

Evaluation

What has my life meant? What skills do I bring to this new season? Those allow me to springboard into other areas, using talents and abilities honed in a lifetime of living.

Pruning

What do I need to rid myself of to move on? Habits accumulate like barnacles on a ship’s hull. Many times, it is holding onto opinions.

I do know that as we age, we cull relationships. I no longer need a long list of acquaintances but a short list of friends.

Sowing

In each season of life, we sow the seeds of influence in someone. Can I affect the future by influencing those younger? What can I teach and do that helps them serve and grow? The person who never sows will never reap. And the seed he sows may not bear fruit until after he is gone. I still have to sow what seed I can.

In 1912, medical missionary Dr. William Leslie served a remote tribe in a desolate part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He returned to the U.S. seventeen years later, sure he had done nothing of lasting value. He died 9 years later with the same discouragement.

In 2010, a team led by Eric Ramsey with Tom Cox World Ministries returned and found dozens of reproducing churches hidden like glittering diamonds in the dense jungle across the Kwilu River from Vanga, where Dr. Leslie was stationed.

The harvest happened because the seeds were sown. His life ended, but his work remained.

Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds you plant.”

Yet, the farmer knows the principle of life. “The crop is in the future, but the sowing is in the present.” I continue to look for what is appropriate for the season.

Do you?