I grew up in Los Angeles, in the suburbs of Lynwood and Burbank. The weather in Southern California might best be described as consistent. Or monotonous. New Years, Easter, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They all looked pretty much the same. Evergreen plants and trees under blue skies with moderate temperatures.  

It's why so many residents go to extremes to decorate their homes for the holidays: to remind them which one they're currently celebrating.

Life doesn't work like that.

You plant in the spring. You tend in the summer. You harvest in the autumn. You rest in the winter.  

When you grow up in a region where it's always spring, you develop certain unrealistic expectations. Not only around seedtime and harvest. But around life itself and its seasons of change.

To the one who knows only one season, hardship and death are perceived as violent intruders into his perennial spring. To the one who understands the rhythms of spring, summer, winter, and fall, hardship and death are natural notes of life itself. In fact, she understands that death does not break into life, but life breaks forth from death; as Jesus himself observed, "Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit" (John 12:24).

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... 

God has made everything beautiful for its own time  

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-11).  

Are you "stuck" in one metaphorical season? Is it spring, summer, winter, or fall? What's it like for you?

How does this statement resonate with you--or not: "death does not break into life, but life breaks forth from death." Describe an experience you've had that supports this statement--or not.  

Not all death is of the "assume-room-temperature" variety. What experiences of life can rightfully be described as variations on the theme of death?    

What's a new perspective around hardship and death?

Is there a way, regardless of where you live, you might more faithfully honor the natural rhythms of the seasons of the year? Of the seasons of life?