9/13/08

For everything there is a season...


Image by South Dakota FFA

I must have had a very good summer because I've never mourned a summer's passing as much as I have this one. Over the last couple of years I've noticed I've grown more sensitive to the change of seasons and there's something pleasing about that. Perhaps I'm more attuned to nature and the world around me. Perhaps I'm slowing down enough to notice what I've passed by and rushed through for too many years. Perhaps I'm just getting older and the passing seasons are more telling than in my youth.


Some warm days are still in store for New England before the trees are fully dressed in their fall finery but cool nights are already upon us and just today I rode an elevator with a man taking a purple chrysanthemum to his mother. Mums are a sure sign
of autumn.

I exited the elevator on the fifth
floor to visit an older couple whose accumulated seasons are many more than mine. In fact, they were married before I was born. As I calculate it, they've passed through nearly 250 seasons as husband and wife: 62 winters, 62 springs, 62 summers and 62 falls...

Now has come a season for her to care for him in new ways, as old ways slowly slip away. He has become something of a prisoner in his own body and she has become his cell mate.
No crime, no wrong doing here: they are but living out the binding sentence they spoke to each other, the words that yoked them as one: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part...

You would hope and wouldn't you pray that their 62 years of faithful love might end with a glorious spring of warmth and rosebuds and lengthening days... but their days dwindle down in an autumn of bright afternoons, chilled by hints of falling leaves and winter...

Still a summer warmth burned in her eyes as she looked at him and I saw in her gaze the strength of all they have shared and the faith that binds them as one... When I asked him if she were a good nurse, his whole face answered before his lips said yes...


For these two this is a
good season, a hard season, yet another season of love...


I must have had a very good summer because I've never mourned a summer's passing as much as I have this one. Perhaps I'm slowing down enough to notice what I've passed by and rushed through for too many years. Perhaps I'm just getting older and the passing seasons are more telling than in my youth. And there's something pleasing about that...


-ConcordPastor

3 comments:

  1. Your words make me cry...yet, it is a good cry. A cry filled with knowing; with familiarity save the details. Enough said. What is it about autumn?

    Your friend at home on the Lowerline.

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  2. What a beautiful story! A love deep enough to withstand the many sorrows and heartaches through our lives, is a love to be treasured. I think you are right ... as we get older we slow down and learn to appreciate the seasons of our lives.

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  3. 62 years - What a great story, thanks for sharing.


    I too feel that I have rushed through too many years.... its a good reminder to slow down and smell the roses

    God bless them both! ROB

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