Neptune's Passage -

        My family and I were having coffee this am out by our pool. We have two yucca trees which bloom about this time every year. They are beautiful white blooms that stand silhouetted against a clear azul sky. I mentioned that I always associated their blooming with the beginning of school like the Jacaranda's purple blossoms during the season when school winds down to a close. The mechanics of the blooming I reasoned were the slight changing of weather in Southern California. If you live here long enough you can recognize fall and spring by the slight variations of weather and that certain feeling that you have from nature or from nurture (I never figured out which). I am not sure what inside of me is telling me that a change is happening but I can feel it in the air.
         While we all sipped our coffee and ruminated on this thought, my son mentioned that Neptune was nearing its first year's journey around the solar system's helios since it was predicted in 1846. It takes about 165 YEARS (earth years) to cycle around the sun. Our family has a way of extrapolating any subject to its absurd. So in keeping, my son continued  that you could be born on the planet of the sea god and live your life in winter and spring, and possibly see summer. After a pause to let that sad thought settle, he furthered, or worse you could be born in fall and live only through winter, dying without ever seeing spring or summer! That saddest of all thoughts rebounded causing me immediately to be grateful for our earth and the wonderful rhythms of its seasons. I was so thankful we get to see them year in and year out.  These seasons and their blossoms express a quiet deep constance of God. They are an expression of Him.
       The seasons of life are important. The author of Ecclesiastes tells us that;
"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven". Are these appointed times? The writer uses two Hebrew words for time. One is said to be more general, like a season N¡Dm◊z. The other is more specific like "right now", t¶Eo. The latter is the one he uses when pointing out all the specifics of cycles that people go through. "A time to be born, a t¶Eo to die...."
      But how do we know these times? We may know the season for birth, but do we know it for death?  I may even know when my tree is going to bloom. But if I knew what caused it, I would feel more, well, wise. Aren't we to know?  Is it all to do with the sun? Does the plant know to bloom by the sun's position? Or is it temperature change, or barometric change or moisture content?  How does the flower know to bloom? Just or more importantly do we have seasons of blooming? If yes, then I really want to know what triggers our seasons of blooming in God.
        Are they dependent on our efforts? I know you think I have an answer, but the answer I had was thrown off this year. Summer this year was cool and overcast. It started to warm up in the middle of August. Usually this time of year it starts to cool down from a very hot summer. So my theory of temperature change was busted.
       I have a more personal example. I have just finished a "season" of classes about preaching, called homiletics. We had two practicums that accompanied the course in which I composed 6 sermons and listened to 40 others. It was an awesome time of expanding my understanding of "preaching" and its power in the Protestant tradition. When I finished my last sermon it was my last class at the school and it ended a five year cycle for me. The same week I was cleaning out some old junk in our attic and found the first sermon I ever preached in the bulletin announcing the revival  at which I was speaking. Inside the bulletin was the note card with my sermon outline on it! The year was 1968. I was 19. The next day I found a cache of sermons that were my father's going back to the days when he was a chaplain in WWII. The notes and manuscripts were in "War Department" brown envelopes!  I spent a couple of hours pouring over those sermons. My dad filed all his sermons and used them periodically through the years. Some were typed, some were in my dad's handwriting. Equally as fun was the paper he used for some of his notes. They were bulletins from old churches, note cards, and one had a ballot with deacon candidates' names on it. Most I knew from my youth. It was a very precious time.
        Obviously, this is a time for me. Was this ordained? Predestined? Or just a coincidence? Were the tumblers waitng for the right combination to fall into place? Is it time for me to sermonize? Well again I re-read Ecclesiastes and this verse hit me, "He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end"(NIV).  No man can fathom what God has done.  That is the beauty of it all. Mankind would want answers and explanations. I want answers!  But in the end, it is best if we just sit back and let God show us His marvelous works. MÊ`DlDv…wryI;b JKRl™Rm dYˆw∂;d_NR;b tRl∞RhOq ‹yérVbî;d "The words of the preacher, son of David, king of Jerusalem" (Eccl. 1:1).