My sister and I were driving to the grocery store last night and along the way I got thinking about how ugly the start of Spring can be. The grass is still brown. The trees all look like dead sticks poking out of the ground. The streets are covered with sand from the winter road treatment. What snow is left is black with mud and nothing is left to cover the damage the winter storms have done to the forest. Still, people are outdoors in the evening raking and cleaning up the mess. The stores are filled with pansies and marigolds hoping to be planted and the maples are beginning to bud, promising that soon and very soon beauty is going to return to the Earth.

Seasons of transition in life, like in nature, are not so pretty. They can be discouraging because they leave us feeling naked,  exposed, and feeling incapable. As we grasp to catch up with the next level of life the world around us can perceive us floundering gracelessly to make the leap, or at least that’s how it often feels to me.

Christianity, to me, seems sometimes like one long season of transition where my weaknesses are exposed and challenged and I am called to rise up to higher heights than I think myself capable of. It feels like I am constantly sweeping away last season’s sand to make room for some new planting of the Lord whose outline is yet to be revealed. Can anyone out there relate?

But I have been through enough of these seasons now to know that everything is going to be all right. The upheaval, the challenges, the feelings of being exposed and incapable all just go with the territory, They are things to be grinned at and borne with grace. The plans of God may not yet be fully revealed to us but that is to be expected. It is how God has made faith to work. What we can know in our seasons of transition is that like Spring our seasons of transition may appear at the first deformed and ugly but in a brief time they shall appear glorious!

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. 17Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

18I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. Romans 8:16-19 NIV