Strawberry Season

Devotion for the Week...

This past week my strawberry plants started to flower. It kind of amused me to finally see the flowers because a couple of people I know traveled to the Strawberry Festival in Florida back in March and posted pictures on social media of the abundance of strawberries they bought. In March! I won't actually have berries until at least the middle of July! I know we're pretty far north, but things like that really serve to emphasize just how far north we are.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 is a familiar passage: 

"For everything there is a season,

    a time for every activity under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

    A time to plant and a time to harvest.

A time to kill and a time to heal.

    A time to tear down and a time to build up.

A time to cry and a time to laugh.

    A time to grieve and a time to dance.

A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones.

    A time to embrace and a time to turn away.

A time to search and a time to quit searching.

    A time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear and a time to mend.

    A time to be quiet and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate.

    A time for war and a time for peace."

My strawberry season comes a lot later than yours, if you live in Florida. Actually, most places would have strawberry season before I do. I'll admit that back in March I really wanted my strawberry season to be starting when I saw their berries, but at that point my plants were still buried under several feet of snow. Berries felt a long ways away.

The nice thing about strawberry season is I can be reasonably certain it will come. Bar some crazy weather event, there will be strawberries ready to harvest near me sometime in July, even if something drastic should happen to destroy my own plants. Though I can't do anything to make them ripen faster, I know that if I'm patient, I'll eventually get to eat some delicious, locally grown berries.

We humans are an impatient lot, though. Whatever season we want, we want it now and it gets even harder to wait when we see someone else enjoying the season we want, before we get to have it. Whether that other person has reached a goal we want to reach, traveled somewhere we want to go or been awarded an accolade we long for, seeing them have it can make us want it all the more. 

Unfortunately, we can't always be certain we'll get the things we want. Plenty of the big things we want in life don't come with the regularity of a gardening season; things like relationships or having a child or getting your dream job aren't guaranteed, much as we would like them to be.

God tells us that life has seasons, though. We might be in a waiting season right now, with the thing we want feeling so far away, but "we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God" (Romans 8:28), even the waiting seasons. And maybe, just maybe, the thing we want is like plants still buried under the snow, so to speak. Maybe what we want is coming, but it's just not the right season yet.