personal development on Change of Seasons

Heavenly Father, we stand in awe of Your creation. You are the master of design. You know the change of seasons, You know the orbit of planets, and You know exactly what human beings were made for: a ...

Turn to the sun rising above your head or the leaves of the deciduous trees falling to the ground and think, "In the same way there is a rhythm to nature, I have rhythms too."

In many parts of the country, leaf clean-up is an annual chore. They fall from the trees, blanket our lawns, and we often bag them up and toss them out (or burn them). There’s a lesson in this… In my...

If you are a pastor…this one’s for you. Sabbath. So many things have been written. Most of us have taught our people or preached about Sabbath, and underscored how busy people in our churches re...

Pentecost Came Like Wildfire I’m lying on an ice pack early this morning, doing my back exercises and listening to  Pray as You Go , a tool for meditation, with monastery bells, music, and a Bible re...

One of the most controversial decisions in Super Bowl history took place in the closing seconds of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Seattle Seahawks, with twenty-six seconds remaining and trailing by four...

Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something's time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a...

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

In the midst of winter I discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Someone once quipped that we spend the first half of our lives struggling with the sixth commandment ( Thou shalt not commit adultery ) and the second half of our lives struggling with the fifth comma...

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yo...

God who brings the cleansing rain saturate our thirsty bones with the milk of mercy sweet with the blood that brings us home God who rules the fiery sun kindle now our brittle hearts set ablaze our t...

Hard seasons can cause us to look at God in an unhealthy way. Instead of asking God what He needs us to see in these seasons, we may constantly find ourselves asking Him if He really knows what He is ...

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season,...

Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart Could have recovered greenness?

There are at least three kinds of changes we face: those we wouldn’t choose but we can see coming, those we choose ourselves, and those that flood our homes at two in the morning.

It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transiti...

Repetition is a form of change

The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you ...

Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...

One Christmas Eve in Vermont when my children were small, we did the things you do when your children are small on Christmas Eve. We stuffed and hung their stockings. We put out a draught of cider and...

The circumstances we ask God to CHANGE are often the circumstances God is using to CHANGE US.

The story is told of a farmer in a Midwestern state who had a strong disdain for “religious” things. As he plowed his field on Sunday morning, he would shake his fist at the church people who passed b...

Change invariably leads to loss, loss to grief, grief to anxiety and, finally, anxiety to hostility. We need therefore, to acknowledge grief. We need to understand and choose to walk with the grieving...

For the joy of your presence Changing and renewing us Day by day, We offer you our praise. For the blessing you bring us, The outpouring of your love Day by day, We offer you our praise. For p...

Change is the only constant in life.