Seasons

Recently, we had a couple over to our home for dinner, and when they walked through our front door the wife exclaimed, as though suddenly everything about me was clear in her eyes, "Oh! You're a decorator!" 

It may have been the nicest exclamation that's ever graced our living room, and I'll tell you why. 

I hate hosting.

There are too many opportunities for failure.

Sally Clarkson (a homeschool mother and Christian encourager) recently turned my hosting fears on their head in the pages of her book The Life-Giving Home. She said,

“Beauty is about picturing God’s unchanging goodness and daring to bring it into my own small, dusty days... What my parents-bless them-knew...is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.” 

She spoke about bread and soup meals by candlelight, comfortable furniture, and open invitations; Open arms. She spoke about tissues so someone could feel free to cry, toys so children wouldn't feel out of place, and a clean guest room so that anyone could come and stay whenever you saw a need.

She challenged me to be ever ready, actually prepared, to be God's hands and feet to people in ways that don't come naturally to me.

Part of her book spoke of home decor. You know that I enjoy surrounding myself with beautiful (almost always thrifty) things, but I have never been one for seasonal decor. 

In this book, Sally Clarkson talked about various traditions for various seasons. Sure, I have Christmas stuff to sprinkle about for the month of December, but there's nothing for fall. Nothing for spring. Nothing for summer.

It seemed a waste of money to me, to buy things that only come out briefly each year, but then, as the leaves litter the neighborhood roads, and I can feel the world shifting towards autumn, I started to think about God's hand in the beauty of the seasons.

Recently, I've been running things through a filter of "What does the Bible have to say about that?" And I find that the Bible talks a lot more about a lot of things than we give it credit for... Obviously, there's no verse that says, "You should change your home decor every season." but I noted the way Jesus spoke of the beauty of the things He created in seasons.

Why did He bother making sunflowers and pumpkins and pinecones and mums? Why do the leaves turn color before they fall?

Yes, some are for food, but taste itself is a luxury. Why did He bother making food beautiful? Why did He bother spacing the beauty out throughout the year? A blanket of fresh snow and the glassy point of icicles in winter, all the fresh baby birds and bursting blooms in spring, and then summer with thunderstorms and sunshine and...

In Ecclesiastes 3 it says, "To everything there is a season..." and then after a long list of positive and negative things that we go through for seasons, it says in verse 11, "He hath made everything beautiful in His time..." Ah, the beauty of seasons.

In Matthew 6 & Luke 12, Jesus Himself is encouraging His disciples to take their eyes off their own needs and trust Him to take care of them. He could have just said, "Consider the ravens... God feedeth them!" but He goes on in His example and adds, "Consider the lilies. How they grow... Solomon in all His glory was not arrayed like one of these!" 

God created Solomon just like He created lilies, but Solomon was rich and able to add to himself whatever he wanted... and Jesus essentially says, "Think of the most beautiful person in the most beautiful setting able to add all of this world's beauty to himself, and they're not as beautiful as something I've created to grow wild in the field." 

He's going out of His way in this example to say, "I make beautiful things that thrive!"

Our senses are a gift straight from our Creator. He could have put us in a black and white world with nothing to taste or smell or see or touch or hear, but HE'S NOT THAT KIND OF GOD. He filled our world with beauty and joy: including a mind boggling variety in the underwater world (Psalm 95:5 says, "In His hand are the deep places of the earth..."). While I was prone to turn up my nose at the excess of seasonal decor in someone's home, God Himself is always shifting the world and the beautiful things in it, so that things come and go in waves of beauty. Waves of excessive seasonal beauty.

When speaking of a virtuous woman, in Proverbs 31:21 the Bible says, "She is not afraid of the snow for her household for all her household are clothed with scarlet." The word for scarlet is just the color, red. Not a thick, warm fabric, but a warm color. Earlier in the chapter it told us that she works with wool and flax, so we already know she keeps her family warm, but this verse tells us that a virtuous woman clothes her family in a warm color, as the months grow cold. I love that mention.

So, God used His creativity and beauty to convince me, for the first time this year, that the beauty that comes along with seasonal change is something to be celebrated! Maybe you've always loved seasonal decor and didn't need this revelation, but it's something new for me, and I freshly appreciate God's eye for beauty in the change of seasons!