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Serve According to Your Season
Every season is unique. We currently find ourselves smack-dab in the middle of Summer which brings with it a unique blend of challenges and blessings. Summer challenges us with blazing heat, mosquito bites and sunburns, but it blesses us with barbeques and vacation, blooming gardens and super fresh produce (especially at H-E-B).
After Summer, we’ll merge into Fall, a different season with different challenges and different blessings. In Fall, the heat dies down and mosquitos die off, Starbucks brings back pumpkin flavored everything and college football kicks off. Yet, in Fall the blossoming flowers fall off and hurricanes enter the Gulf.
Every season is unique. Every season has its pains. Every season has its chores. Every season has its blessings. I think it accurate that we’ve coined the term “seasons of life.” Just as our world goes through four unique seasons each with particular blessings and challenges, as we age and change we encounter new seasons of life.
The Lord is acutely aware of these seasons. He knows who you are, what you are, where you are and where you used to be. Regardless of your current season of life, He wants the same thing from all of us. He wants us all to overcome this season’s unique challenges and use this season’s unique blessings to serve Him. He wants us to serve according to our season (Titus 2:1-8).
If you are an older man, serve God as an older man. This season brings tough challenges. You can’t do what you once did, and I’m sure that frustration is immense. Stuff doesn’t work like it should. Things hurt that shouldn’t hurt. An older man cannot serve God in the same way he served as a younger man; that’s a challenge. Yet, with age comes the unique blessing of perspective and wisdom. Paul tells the older man to serve by showing temperance, dignity, sensibility and soundness in faith, love and perseverance. You serve by blessing us with the experience and sense we do not possess. You help us all learn and live rather than live and learn. Serve according to your season.
If you are a younger man, serve God as a younger man. We are strong, energetic, indefatigable. We can serve by exercising our ability to the benefit of others. We are able to run around preaching, helping, encouraging. We can be used and used and used by those who need us. We’re also prone to unbridled zeal, idealism, perfectionism. We, of all the seasons, are the greatest fools. The strength of a young man is our blessing, the lack of experience is our curse. For this reason, we are urged to be sensible, to exemplify good deeds, to be careful that the doctrine we teach and words we speak are beyond reproach. All the while, we must be restrained by the wisdom of the older. Serve according to your season.
If you are an older woman, serve God as an older woman. I imagine is not easy to be an older woman. It may be the hardest of them all. Your kids are gone. Many of you are widows. Of these four seasons, older women are most often the ones overlooked by the rest of us. (Shame on the rest of us). My 100 year old friend, Laura Coyle, told me before she passed that she couldn’t understand why God was making her stick around. Sometimes this season can feel like vanity, but you can serve in this season. Older women are fantastic teachers and brilliant examples. They clothe themselves in the finest dignity. Their behavior demonstrates to every last one of us the true beauty of willing submission. Serve according to your season.
If you are a younger woman, serve God as a younger woman. You are blessed with significant ability. No one else can do what you’ve been called to do. Your husband cannot be who he should be without your help, purity, encouragement. No one can care for your children with as much love and zeal. No one can do what you do to keep your home together. I mean it, no one! But you are challenged as well. You’ve been told that submission is weak, that you’re not important if you heed your husband and let him lead. You’ve been told that immodesty and impurity equals attention and worth. You’ve been told that career comes first. You’ve been told to ignore the older women, because they come from a different era, a worse time. Overcome the challenges of your season, heed the advice of the older women, and serve the Lord according to your season.
We all have different roles to fill. Let us truly embrace the season that is ours and serve God with our whole hearts.
