As each season comes around, I find myself saying, spring is my favorite season. As spring passes and summer arrives, it becomes my favorite season. Before long the day shortens and trees turn into fall colors, I find myself saying, fall is my favorite season. And in a month or two when the snow is on the ground and the world is quiet with a soft blanket of white, I will in all likelihood tell someone, I enjoy winter, for a short time. Truth is, to simply be present as Mother Nature changes seasons, I have begun to see that change, as a gift. In ways, we realize the world around us is greater than each of us. What guides this blue and green planet on which all our lives evolve with the passing seasons?

In our lives we have at times used the changing seasons as a way to gauge our own lives. As we each begin life, we are much like a new sapling of a tree. We begin bare, and cold in this new world. As the sun rises high in the sky, we grow along with the trees and near-by plants. Trees emerge from winter’s stillness to hold their first leaves toward the life-giving sun. An occasional spring storm may weaken a new branch. As for each of us, we also grow in the sunshine. We play and run as we grow into young adults. Occasionally a fall that breaks a bone will heal and is forgotten in the spring of our lives.

As the sun rises higher in our lives, we begin to take on strengths that help to shape and build us into the adults we will become. At the same time the trees and plants know that during this time of season, they must absorb sunlight, and nutrition from the soil. These elements will help them grow and begin to flower, and develop the seeds for the next generations. In the time of the early summer in our lives and that of the trees, life is good, and the world around us has much to share, if we only take the time to realize the bounties the trees and flowers already know.

As summer passes in our lives, we become more thoughtful and realize time has passed and we have reached mid-life. The peak of our lives is now upon us. The tree that began alongside us has grown tall and strong, flowers blossomed, and nature’s insects have pollinated seeds for future forest. In our lives we also have brought forth the next generation.

The earth has begun its tilt away from the sun shortening days. Trees begin to prepare as the fading daylight of late summer is upon us. September’s cooling winds blow and that branch damaged years ago has been weakened by winter snows. A cold gust of north winds sends the branch falling to the ground. The flowers in the field have spread their seeds, and now they blow in the wind. In our own lives that morning jump from our beds has slowed us down, to where we sit on the edge for a few minutes to stretch and make sure everything is working fine.

As fall comes into our lives, and that of the tree, cold north winds find those old injuries from childhood and give you a painful reminder of that time. Time has come, and the first signs of aging along with it. The tree’s leaves have now changed and many begin to fall. They now change color to a bright gold in the shortening days sunlight. The tree’s and each of us know the passing beauty of life is short lived, and the snow of winter may push us back into the earth.

The mighty trees now stand naked in the winter air. They do not ponder when the warm spring sunshine will once again bring them to life for another season. Each of us, as we enter our senior years feel the same way, hoping God will grant us another season of sunshine and joy. But like the great oak tree, the passage of time, the challenges of the world, along with the ticking of our internal clock becomes louder each day.

Like the world around us, we each have been given a gift of life and we share it with others. For each of us our lives are measured not by the world around us, but by the person inside you. A time will come when you begin to think, have I enjoyed the precious gift of life, and shared it with others. And in that fact is where mankind separates itself from the trees in the world around us. Trees and flowers only know the moment, not yesterday. Tomorrow will come. No thought to either side of the moment. But you have the capacity to remember the past, and plan for tomorrow. Do both with joy and conviction. If you can do these things, when the time comes for winter winds to carry you away, it will do so knowing you have left a little of yourself in the world, and the joy that you were a part of it. That is how I see the changing of seasons Through the Lens.