Why You Can Trust Your Savior in Every Season of Life
“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven” (Eccl. 3:1). So said Solomon, the wisest man to live until Jesus walked the earth. What follows this statement in Ecclesiastes is a poem that simply describes the way that life is. Solomon lays out 14 pairs of opposites which paint the cycles of beginnings and endings that every human being will experience. There is “a time to be born, and a time to die” (v. 2); “a time to weep and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (v. 4); “a time to keep silence, and a time to speak” (v. 7)—and so on, with the eventual promise that God makes “everything beautiful in its time” (v. 11).
Are you alive to the stage of life you are in? Or are you just ambling through, oblivious to the unrepeatable wonders within it?
Consider for a moment the stages that mark the typical human life. Given that the average lifespan is around 80 years of age (plus or minus a few years, depending on where you live), we can think of it in terms of seasons—four periods of time, roughly 20 years each in length, which give shape to our lives. Each one is beautiful in its time.
Four Seasons of Life
The Spring of Childhood (age 0–20). We are taking in God’s world one glorious new experience at a time. We are learning who we are and how God has gifted us. Unburdened by the responsibilities of our elders, our imaginations run wild with what the future might be, as we race toward it with boundless energy.
The Summer of Adulthood (age 21–40). The summer of our lives is a season of celebration and defining moments. It is a time when we focus our gifts toward a specific vocational pathway. Many of us will celebrate getting married and raising children. We settle into convictions about what matters most in life. Adulthood marks a time when we are no longer children merely receiving from those around us, but men and women who now meaningfully contribute to the world.
The Autumn of Midlife (age 41–60). Here we enter a season of fullness and maturity. We enjoy the fruit produced from the summer of our life, along with the wisdom and influence we have gained through those years. No longer are we considered by anyone as a young man or woman. Instead, we notice the beginnings of a decline in our energy and strength as this season goes on. The transition is sometimes a difficult one, with many of us navigating health issues or some sort of midlife crisis as it dawns on us that we are now closer to our end than our beginning.
The Winter of Our Final Years (age 61–). The winter of life means that our race is entering the final furlong. We’re not dead yet and have plenty left to do, but we are slowing down. The signs are all there: the color of winter’s snow has appeared in our hair, as “a crown of glory” (Prov. 16:31). We look back on our lives with grateful hearts. Desiring to finish well, we press onward by passing on our gifts and wisdom to those coming up behind us. We prepare for the inevitability of death, even as we look forward with eagerness to the eternal springtime of heaven, now just a little way over the horizon, longing to hear the most precious of words, “Well done, good and faithful servant . . . Enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:23).
Each Season Is Beautiful
How did you feel as you read about the above seasons? Are you so fixated on seasons behind you or yet ahead of you that your heart is disgruntled by the one staring you in the face? Do you feel envious when you look at the seasons that those around you are in? If God is with you in every season, then there is unimaginable joy and goodness and purpose and meaning and courage to be found in every season. Each stage of our life is unrepeatable. Each is beautiful. The only question is: do we really believe that?
It’s as we embrace this that we learn to live well. After all, how many of our frustrations are the result of our attempts to live in a different season to our present one? When we are teenagers, we want to be adults and enjoy the freedoms that come with adulthood. When we are adults, we long for the carefree days of our childhood. I’m sure you can think of countless other examples. Yet while our longings for better days (however we might define that) are understandable, they can be poor companions. They are like that one friend who constantly talks throughout a movie, so busy trying to predict what is coming up or make sense of what happened in the past that they miss the story unfolding in real-time. Always longing to be in a time that is not this time leads to mis-living in every time.
God of All Seasons
So let me ask you again: what season of life are you in—here and now—which God wants you to be fully present to? Fruitfulness over the long haul is a lot less about finding balance and a lot more about knowing what season you are in and living accordingly. Whatever season you’re in, do not lose heart. Refuse to quit on your present season just because it doesn’t look like a previous one. Like the Israelites entering the promised land, you too, at this very moment, are standing in the middle of a story unfolding. And the story is not over. What powers our perseverance through the ever-changing circumstances of life is the never-changing presence of God. His goodness towards every one of his children clothes every second of every single season they will ever inhabit. Including the hard ones. In the most famous psalm of all, Psalm 23, David acknowledges that the Lord leads him through seasons that feel like pleasant green pastures and restorative still waters (v. 2–3) as well as seasons that can only be described as “the valley of the shadow of death” (v. 4). Yet he is so convinced of God’s unchanging goodness toward him that he still exclaims in verse 6, “Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life”!
David knew that while the seasons change, God does not. He is “the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). He is the Savior who “is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). When we accept our present season, along with the joys and challenges and limitations that come with it, we’ll discover that we’re actually not missing out at all. We’ll discover gratitude for what is behind us, hope for what is ahead of us, and joy in the season that God has right now set before us. You need not fear the changes that come with time when you are banking all that you are on the God who is constant. For if God is sovereign over the seasons of your life, then you can trust him in every season of that life.
This article is an excerpt from Faithfully Present by Adam Ramsey (The Good Book Company, 2023), used with permission. In the book, Adam explores the human limitations of time and place in a thoughtful, and sometimes witty way. He encourages his readers to embrace these limits and shows that there is joy to be found in the here and now, even as we look forward to "time unlimited in a place uncursed.”
Adam Ramsey leads Liberti Church on the Gold Coast, Australia and also serves as the director for Acts 29 Asia Pacific. The author of several books, including Truth on Fire and Truly, Truly, I Say to You. His favorite parts of life include being married to Kristina, making memories with their five kids, and preaching good news.