This post was first shared as issue 5 of These Sacred Words

“Behold, I am doing a new thing;
    now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
    and rivers in the desert.”
– Isaiah 43:19

In summer the aspens’ green leaves glitter when the wind blows. The tiny circular leaves look like silver dollar eucalyptus; the trunks like bleached driftwood. They’re my absolute favorite tree in Colorado.

In fall the aspens’ tiny leaves turn an unbelievably brilliant yellow, fluttering like a thousand little coins. Stripes of gold and orange flash by the window as you drive. Splotches of yellow splashed across the sides of mountains, making the mountainside look like it’s on fire. 

I’ve always loved the changing of seasons; the shift in temperature signaling that something new is coming.


I’ve lived much of my life poised for change, waiting expectantly for the big adventurous next thing. Always looking ahead. Always restless. Always craving newness. 

I live my life leaning forward, eyes searching the horizon, glancing over what is right in front of me to gaze longingly at what is around the next bend. 

But it feels like lately the Lord has been urging me to view the changing of seasons differently. Rather than looking forward to what is to come, it feels like I am bring pressed to notice the right-now. The change of temperature encouraging me to really see the beauty that today holds. The shifting of the season leading to an urgency to be present.

I mean this in the literal sense of the actual change of the seasons (summer to fall, warm to cool), but also in the sense of the tempo and flux of life.

My life right now seems to be in a tension of everything happening and nothing happening. Of waiting for some things that feel too far away and of trying to hold onto other things as they spin by too fast. Some things I don’t feel ready for are happening quickly, but other things that I want to happen are not yet happening.

I’m praying for grace to see God in this tension.

In the parts of my life I wish would change, I’m praying for the patience to see beauty in how things are right now. In the parts of life that are flying by as quickly as the days of summer seemed to fly, I’m praying for grace to see God in the shifting and the newness.

Overall, in all that life holds, God is teaching me (over and over again, it seems) that he is faithful, unchanging, and sturdy.

“For I the Lord do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”
– Malachi 3:6

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
– Hebrews 13:8

I pray that you see the beauty of this too, in whatever shifting season (or not-happening-quickly-enough-season) you’re in.

In the moments of life where it seems like surely God has changed, surely his plan has failed, surely nothing can come from *insert overwhelming situation*, we remember. God has never not been good to us. He has never failed us. He has always provided, comforted, and loved. Our whole lives are a journey of learning to see him and know him and trust him more – a foretaste of heaven itself.

So, knowing this, we open our hands wide, expecting good things from our unchanging and faithful God. In the areas of life that feel in-between, overwhelming, frustrating, *insert emotion*, I pray that we would have strength to say to God, “I trust you with timing, with future, with plans, with hopes. Lord, I trust you today, for all my days.”

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
– James 1:17