The Seasons of Our Years

[HKHaugan]

Copies and Shadows of Things to Come
The Seasons of Our Years

When we think of a year it's divided into seasons---Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. We read them by signs of temperature change, the appearance of foliage colors, the harvest of crops, length of daylight and the shedding of leaves. The year moves in cycles of adaptation to a relatively similar environmental shift. However, they move me into a more localized view of seasons. The seasons that happen from day to day. The seasons that are external but point to the internal.

One of my truly fond remembrances from childhood was our many trips to Maine’s lower mountain wilderness where we would go in the Summer to fish. Our cabin was on a remote lake accessed only by boat. A real steam locomotive pulled our train through dense forests and, as was the custom then, let us off at a flag stop by a lake. No roads went in there. No cars, trucks or even horse and wagon. A boat picked us up at the train stop and we went 13 miles across a lake to our cabin. The cabin had a wood stove we cooked on and a pot-belly stove we used for heat. Our baths were in the cold lake waters. There was a rickety outhouse behind the cabin. For light we had kerosene lanterns.

When night fell the sounds of loons wailing, owls calling their ‘whooo-s’ into the darkness mingled with the sounds of hungry mosquitoes angrily frustrated by the screen barrier between them and our flesh. I could see through the window how the stars went from small pinpoints to bright clusters making it seem like a heaven full of intermittently blinking Christmas tree lights. Occasionally the cracking of dry limbs outside suggested larger animals we knew were bear and bobcat eyeing our cabin hoping for some of the leavings of a fragrant fresh fish dinner. Then there were also the sounds you just had to guess about and fantasized at the boundaries of your imagination.

There were four seasons in those short Summer excursions, sunrise, day, sunset and night. All of them were connected by one thing, fishing. I always woke up way before sunrise ahead of my parents. I wanted to experience everything about the woods and do it alone. It was like my secret world. I was spurred on to that early rising by the fact that it was my job to take the rowboat and catch chub minnows when light was just barely breaking. That was our bait for smallmouth bass, pickerel and freshwater salmon.

The day season came next just when the sun was lifting itself above the horizon. That was when my father rowed while I sat in the bow and my mother sat in the stern. He knew just where to go. It was always a mile or so of rowing but he did it as though it were a daily routine. We stayed out the whole day. The fish we caught were carefully chained and dragged behind he boat. We used to stop on a distant shore to eat a lunch my mother had packed. Every so often it would rain on those trips and there were thunderstorms that made the lake like a set of bouncing mattresses. My father was never fazed, nor my mother for that matter. We just got soaked, bounced in the boat and never thought anything about it. To me it was exciting.

Then came sunset and my father aimed the boat back to the cabin. I knew both he and my mother really enjoyed contemplating that soon to be a great meal of bacon fried fish and sometimes butter-baked fish. I did too. There is nothing like meals cooked on a wood stove in the darkening evening. The aroma of mixed wilderness air and cooking fish has got to be one of the finest delights. While the cooking was going on my next real job was to make sure the boat was secure and all the fishing equipment made it into the cabin. That was important because we had to oil the reels, check the line for wear, clean the lures if we used them and tighten the rod joints, having everything ready for the next day.

Then came the night again. We would sit by the fire and I would hear my parents talk about the old country, the mountains, comparing fishing trips and family. It seemed I was the first to get sleepy. I vaguely remember being tucked into my cot, listening for those ongoing night sounds but the next thing I knew it was time to get up. Sunrise was on the way.

All those experiences were my introduction to what would be my spiritual preparation to understand the house of the Lord and its courts. Later, much later, I came to know in that wilderness I was in His house. The sky and the clusters of lights were just one of His courts. The lake, the joy of fishing, of doing my little jobs, of watching my father row, my mother’s lunches on the shore, the storms, the rain, our nightly gathering in front of the fire, the stories, the animals in their wanderings, the mountains and the sheer enjoyment of being in the midst of all that, these were tastes, fragrances and His created earthly courts for His children to enjoy. They point to the deeper spiritual courts. Even the seasons of sunrise, day, sunset and night pave the way to grasp the larger spiritual realm awaiting the believer.

If we behold the sequence and experience of those seasonal events we can see the greater house, which our flesh and spirit cry for, as did David. We live in a huge wilderness both visible and invisible. In it we have been given the Great Opportunity, knowing the Lord through whom everything came into being. Localize how personal this gigantic house is for our mind, heart and spirit to dwell in, how personal He has meant it to be for each of us.

Sunrise is the new day and the promises it holds. It is the expectation that every next moment the Lord has something in store for us personally. Every next moment is a gift to depend on the grace, love and truth of the Lord.

The day is filled with relational and occupational challenges awaiting our spiritual application. A day to trust the Lord's presence in the Spirit. A day whose every next moments are unpredictable, speculative at best, therefore moments awaiting us to trust the Lord to act faithfully in that moment.

The sunset comes with a blending fade of activity as we retreat into our separate caves where our closest relationships call for the closest spiritual care. Here, in the awareness and alertness to those we love, the Lord gives us a special blessing in personal and interpersonal growth.

Then night brings the lonely head on the pillow praying in thanks for the past day and the contemplation of the next day, with its hopes and fears as we drift into welcomed sleep.

The house is Jesus Himself. His courts are the gifts and fruit of the Spirit. All of creation is the expression, the outer chamber leading to the inner chamber of His House, the Kingdom of Heaven. The courts are there waiting in the pages of Scripture calling us to enter and discover the depth His Spirit has planned for us and the relationships He blesses us with. What we have in this world are shadows and copies of things to come.

Perhaps you would like to add some of your ‘court’ experiences that prepared your heart for a relationship with the Lord. Your comments would be a help to all of us.

“How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord almighty! My soul yearns, even faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young---a place near your altar, Lord almighty, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you. Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.
As they pass through the Valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, til each appears before God in Zion (Psalm 84:1-7).”