Readings:
Revelation 7:9-end; Psalm 34:1-10; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Collect:
God of holiness,
your glory  is proclaimed in every age:
as we rejoice in the faith of your saints,
inspire us to follow  their example with boldness and joy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Reflection: The Changing Seasons of Life
Introduction - On Sunday, the twenty-fifth of October, the clocks in the United Kingdom went back an hour, and we were handed a gift of sixty minutes that most of us will accept without a second thought. We will wake to a little more morning light and, by the afternoon, we will notice how quickly the evening arrives, and the change will mark in a very ordinary way our turning towards the darker days, the cooler air and the slower rhythm of winter. It is easy to treat the changing of the clocks as nothing more than a small inconvenience, a matter of resetting the oven and the car dashboard, but I would like us to see it as a gentle yearly invitation to pause and to think about the seasons of our own lives. Scripture reminds us that this turning is woven into the way God made the world. The writer of Ecclesiastes says, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens" (Ecclesiastes 3:1), and God promised after the flood that "as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease" (Genesis 8:22). If that is true of the natural world, it is also true that the changing seasons of our own lives sit within the care of the One who made time itself.

When a Season Comes to an End - If we are honest, many of us resist the changing of the seasons, both in the calendar and in our own lives. We cling to the long bright evenings of summer, to the years when our health was stronger, our children were smaller, our work felt purposeful or our prayers came more easily. When a season ends, whether through bereavement, a change of job, a move, an illness, the departure of a friend or simply the quiet passing of the years, we can feel as though the light has been taken from us and that we have been left standing in the dusk without a lantern. There is nothing unspiritual about feeling this way, and it is right to acknowledge the loss and to bring it honestly before God, who is never impatient with our grief and who understands how hard it is to let go of what we have loved. The Bible is full of people who had to leave one season and enter another without knowing what lay ahead. Abraham left his homeland, Naomi returned to Bethlehem bereaved, the exiles in Babylon were told to build houses and settle in a land they had not chosen, and the disciples had to learn to live without the physical presence of Jesus. In each case the ending felt like a loss, and yet God was already present in what came next. Our grief and our reluctance do not mean that we lack faith, and they are often the very place where faith is stretched and deepened. God Is at Work in the Winter - The rhythm of the seasons teaches us that God is not absent in the winter. The field that lies bare is resting, and the seed beneath the soil is doing its hidden work long before anyone sees green shoots. Jesus used this very picture when he said, "Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds" (John 12:24). The quiet and difficult seasons of life are often where roots grow deeper, faith is refined and we learn to depend on God rather than on our own strength. A tree in winter appears to be doing nothing, yet it is storing energy and sending its roots further down in search of water, so that when the warmth returns it can bear leaf and fruit. Many of us can look back on a hard season and recognise, perhaps only years afterwards, that it was then that we learned to pray honestly, to lean on other believers, or to hear God more clearly than we ever had in times of ease. The prophet Isaiah offers a word to those who are weary in the waiting: "those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint" (Isaiah 40:31). The promise is not that winter will be short, but that strength is given to those who wait on God. What looks like a pause may in fact be preparation.

Numbering Our Days - The changing of the clocks also invites us to remember that our time is not ours to hold. We speak of saving time, losing time and making time, as though it were something we owned, but the psalmist knew better when he prayed, "Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom" (Psalm 90:12), and again, "My times are in your hands" (Psalm 31:15). To number our days is not to be anxious about them but to receive each one as a gift and to ask how we might use it well, and there is real wisdom in receiving each season as it comes rather than wishing it away. Autumn asks us to give thanks for what has been harvested and to let go of what has served its purpose, just as the trees release their leaves without fear. Winter asks us to wait, to rest and to trust, to value the warmth of fellowship and the lamp lit in the window, and to pray more slowly. Spring and summer will come again, though perhaps in forms we did not expect, and when they do we will be better able to receive them because we have learned to be faithful in the seasons between. At this turn of the year we might ask ourselves some honest questions. Which season am I in, and have I truly accepted it? What is God inviting me to let go of, and what to begin? Who around me is in a winter of their own, and how might I bring them some warmth?

Conclusion - What steadies us through every season is that God does not change with them. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8), and "because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lamentations 3:22-23). Whether we are in a time of abundance or a time of waiting, we are held by a faithfulness that does not shorten with the daylight. As we gain our extra hour due to clock change, perhaps we might spend a few moments of it in quiet, thanking God for the season we are leaving, asking for grace in the season we are entering, and trusting that we are known and loved in them all. The clocks will go back and the nights will lengthen, but the God who holds the seasons will hold us too, and in his time the light will return.

Revd Adedayo Adebiyi