Walking Through the Seasons of Our Lives: Part 1

Psalm 61:1-4 & Matthew 11:28-30
 

Life through all its stages of development, is full of challenges, hopes & dream, as well as disappointments, fears, & joys. It is like a mosaic made up of multiple pieces, each of them full in itself, each of them a steppingstone making up the continuous lifeline we call our life. Life goes by so fast, doesn’t it? One day you are learning how to talk, walk, run & play. The next day you are learning how to be a student & how to make friends as you begin to define who you are & what makes you unique. Then, before you realize it, you are referred to as an adult, merging old & new traditions, as you spend your time making decisions that shape your life. These life decisions at least on some level, consciously or unconsciously, begin with the question of what it is that will inform the decisions you make; faith, family, finances, education, etc. The decisions are plentiful in this season of our life; the type of career you will prepare for which often determines the economic class you desire to live in, the question of whether you will marry & whether you will raise a family, the question of where you will live & who your friends will be?, etc. It is a busy full time in our life that seems to speed by without us even noticing it. And then, seemingly suddenly, we realize that the season has changed & we are no longer young but somehow have become older. Those days of dreaming, planning & building change & our children leave the nest that we so carefully built & they go forth making their own decisions, shaping their own lives & making their way. Before we feel we are ready we find ourselves watching others develop the shape of their life, as we shift & spend our time with an eye on increasing changes, a shorter time to dream ahead, & more time to try to remember. And then the season comes when we can no longer do what we used to do, as the lights grow dim, & we find our time is running out. We all know our physical time on earth will run out & death will come to our bodies eventually.

However, though we may live by faith that our spirits will live on, I think we’d all agree, that it is humbling as our bodies give out & we need an arm to lean on so we don’t fall, or someone to bathe us to stay clean or someone to help us in the bathroom, or we can’t remember things that we used to easily be able to think of, etc. Gerontologists tell us there are three stages of “old” in our society. There are the young-old, sixty-five to seventy-four years old, the old-old, seventy-five to eighty-four, & then the oldest-old, eighty-five years & over. All of these stages have some things in common & each of them faces specific issues at the same time. It is not always easy to move through our various seasons of life gracefully. It is easy to get tired out & even weary from time to time as we move through our days facing the various challenges each season brings. As we come to the season of oldest-old, watching life through dimming eyes and a lifetime of wisdom, I think everyone hopes that somehow, they have made a difference & that their children & others they have encountered through their seasons of life will be alright as they make their choices & shape their lives. Each life lived leaves some sort of an imprint that sends a message to future generations. It makes a difference how we journey through the seasons of life we are given. 

~Posted by Rev Kathryn Bindig, MDiv. MS; Pastoral Care Minister with assistance from Rich Muscatello; Director of Business Development & Strategy