For several months …

It’s been stormy, cold and freezing, you know, typical winter weather. But it wasn’t winter. As the  earth completes its tilt away from the sun, the northern hemisphere experienced it’s shortest day and longest night – yesterday.

Now we creep the next 6 months to the beginning of summer as the Northern Hemispere completes its tilt toward the sun. 

For longer than we can comprehend, this has been the way of our home planet. 

With this understanding of planet dynamics we can more easily understand the concepts of seasons.  

Perhaps those freakish events out of season are harder to explain. Last month I was chipping the ice from the dogs water bucket, long before winter was scheduled to appear. And now that winter has arrived the ice chipper is not needed.  Weird. 

Here’s a thought, sometimes things happen out of season without clear explanation. 

It happens in life also. No explanation. Things happen. And you never saw it coming. The event (perhaps a storm) was brewing and you never saw the signs. 

Why do we miss the signs? 

What will be a greater danger is when we miss the signs that Jesus warns us about in the Gospels.  

Luk 12:54-56 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. 55 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. 56 Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?

If we can detect the seasonal changes and weather events, why can we not comprehend the spiritual times?

Jesus even speaks to signs to watch for with the expectation of its happening. 

Mat 24:33 So likewise ye, when ye shall see all these things, know that it is near, even at the doors.

Why do we miss these things? Thinking this through as I consider Christmas. Out of time, yet in proper timing, Jesus was born.  

The Apostle Paul tells it like this. 

Gal 4:4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

Regardless of the season, and even when man could not consider the event, God said it was time. His timing. Not ours. 

Perhaps we should consider this – when things happen to us that we could not forecast, we should accept this simply as the event given at a fullness of time that is in God’s hands and not our own.  

By Michael Gurley

Making Sense of Life, One Thought at a Time!