I remember reading this a few years ago and realizing for the first time just how significant times and seasons are to human existence. God created them and explained them and set it all up before there even were people.Then God said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth”; and it was so.
Then God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
Genesis 1:14-19
Astrology has given the heavenly bodies a bad rap in Christian circles. It is good for us to think about the sun and moon and stars as the special gifts God made them, and glorify Him for that.
It is also important to realize that He has wired us to recognize and relate to times and seasons.
As we approach New Year's day and the dawn of 2007, we can look at it as a God-given reminder to take stock of where He has brought us this season and where He is leading us the next.
Let's start praying now for the new year.
And please pray for the prayer meeting we'll be having on New Year's Eve, that those who are planning it would have discernment and that Christ would be glorified through our time together, our prayers, and in His answers.
4 comments:
Yeah, I agree that times and seasons are significant and as Christians we don't acknowledge the significance as much. I think this is especially the case for those of us who are not in liturgical churches (please don't take any of the following comments to mean that we should all become liturgical churches).
Now the big question that comes to mind to me: "What is the significance of seasons?"
I am not sure that I have thought about that deeply enough but now is always a good time to begin. I would be curious to hear of the reflections of others. Here are the beginnings of some of mine:
1. One central idea seems to me that the seasons are to remind us of salvation history (salvation history is the major events of God's working in history to bring salvation like the calling Abraham, Exodus, building of the temple, incarnation, Christ crucified and risen, return of Christ, etc.). There is a correspondence between creation and salvation history.
In the time and culture of the Old Testament, there were many stories of either gods or kings where the gods/kings win a battle, build a palace, and begin to reign. Seasons might be thought to reflect the battle of gods and death and resurrection of one.
This idea isn't completely foreign to the Bible. The creation narrative best seems to be understood as God as king (what he commands comes into being) instead of building by conflict he creates peacefully by bringing order through separation and divison (separates the night from day, water from land, etc.). God builds creation, his temple-palace. Rest is God's beginning to reign in his temple-palace. Now man is created in God's image and so has a royal role. He is to express dominion under God by expanding the place of the presence of God (Eden) and protecting the sacred space (Eden) by casting out the serpent in obedience to God. In this way he is to express a royal wisdom. If he does so he would enter into God's rest. This pattern can also be found in the history of Israel. God brings victory over Pharoah and they are to achieve victory over their enemies in the conquest, go into the land with the goal of building the temple, and there the Davidic king will reign, bringings shalom, and rest (note the way the book of Hebrews connects the notion of rest with God's rest in Genesis, Joshua, and David, and the rest in Christ). Yet only in Christ does man achieve this pattern and enter into rest. Christ, the king, comes achieves victory over Satan, sin, the powers, and the world crushing the serpent's head through the cross and resurrection. He destroys the temple and rebuilds it (his body) and brings about the new end time temple, his body (physical as well as the church, those "in Christ"). And only in Christ can man enter into God's rest.
I think the stories of other gods and kings during the time are false parodies or distortions of the truth. The gods create by battling other gods but God has no equal power or even any other power which he must battle in creation. There are also many other distortions but that is a major one.
But it is interesting that the festivals of Israel correspond both to seasons and have redemptive significance. They relate to the seasons and recall the history of God's redemption of Israel. So you have Passover and Pentecost. Then these are taken up on the gospel even as they are transformed. Passover becomes the time where Christ is the true Passover lamb who brings about the New Exodus of deliverence from Satan, sin, death, and the powers. Pentecost becomes the time of the coming of the Spirit in Acts.
So why this long drawn out explanation? The reason is that I think the seasons were intended to parallel the history of salvation. If this is true, winter should remind us of the bondage of sin, Satan, and death. Yet on the horizon lies Spring and hope of rebirth. Christ is coming into the world, light is shining in the darkness. I don't think it is out of nowhere that C. S. Lewis uses the imagery of winter and then Aslan's death/resurrection breaking the perpetual winter.
As life seems chaotic and filled with tribulation and things seem as dark and bleak as winter, there is hope as we look to Spring. Christ came into the world and was crucified and risen for us and is coming back again. As we perpetually fail again and again in sin, there is hope.
Hope pushes us to persevere. There is a big difference working on a math problem that you know there is an answer to versus working on a math problem where there may not even be an answer. Because of hope we know our perseverence is not in vain.
So the seasons are to point to salvation in Christ! Nothing new; all things point to Christ. So at winter let us reflect on the dark, cold, and bleak of bondage to sin, Satan, and death but that hope entered the world in that manger.
2. The second thing I think the seasons point to is God's rule and his ordering of creation. In creation God ordered the world through separation and division. He separates the land from the water and night from day. He "organizes" the world. He also gives roles to creation by giving creatures for the different domains. The "greater light" rules the day and the "lesser light" rules the night just as man us to have dominion (rule) over creation under God. So I think all this is to point to the rule of God from which our dominion derives. It is also to remind us that God as ruler has ordered the world well and as he desires. Our role as humans is a divinely given role that is worthy of reflection as well.
Well here are some of my own reflections on the significance of seasons.
I have to point out that while you describe Winter as a time of darkness and bleakness of bondage to Sin, and Spring as hope in Christ. You have misplaced two seasons, Summer and Autumn.
I don't think you can really pick apart time, space and the seasons using our limited knowledge of anything.
But if I really wanted to identify them with the Bible, I think I would start with Autumn.
Autumn would be the Garden of Eden. At our creation. For me Autumn tends to feel slow and lazy, but so peaceful. It's not too hot or too cold, and everything is content.
Winter would come next, as you so vividly described, our bondage to Sin. One biting wind after another, and water that soaks your socks no matter what you do. Winter would be the Old Testament, before the hope that we have Christ.
Then Spring, Spring would be from Christ's death and resurrection until his final coming. A time of hope as you put it. Right now everyday people are finding the new life that Spring promises and they're finding it in Christ.
The last season is summer. I once heard Summer described as Golden, and the streets of our Summer will be.
So there you have it, my quick reflection on the seasons.
I think it is biblically valid to relate the seasons to salvation history for the following reasons:
1. During the Old Testament times there were stories of other gods/kings where there was a pattern of battle, temple-palace building, and enthronement or reign. These stories were often associated with creation or the changing of the seasons.
2. Scripture displays this same pattern both in creation and salvation (new creation). Moreover, salvation history is connected with feasts both with Isreal and the new covenant.
3. Scripture displays a general awareness of both sacred space and scared time. Yahweh dwells in the holy of holies, but to a lesser sense in the temple and lesser sense in Jerusalem and lesser sense in Israel, but to be cast out is to be in the wilderness. Eden is the sacred space and to be cast out is to be cast out from the presence of God. There is a yearly cycle of feasts for the Jews and the weekly cycle of the Sabbath. Priestly ritual can be largely seen as a matter of sacred space and sacred time. It can be seen as a keeping or protecting of the sacred space.
4. New creation is creation redone in the same pattern but in some elevated sense. To say it in the fancy way "eschatology is protology recapitulated but only in a higher sense." Creation sets the pattern for new creation (salvation). If salvation in Christ was God improvising or his second thought then perhaps it would be arbitrary for us to associate seasons with salvation, but all of Scripture points to Christ being the goal before the foundation of the world. The pattern set forth in creation has Christ as its goal all along. Nothing out of place seeing the seasons themselves pointing to this goal.
5. All of creation exists to glorify God and to point to Christ.
6. There is an obvious conceptual similarity between the movement of the seasons from death to life. This conceptual similarity is the reason that Lewis can use it so vividly.
So I don't think we are inventing any meaning that isn't there or being creative or speculating. I think there are biblical and theological reasons for it.
Here I am on weaker ground, but I tend to think the significance of the seasons should be seen in terms of a general point. It is similar to biblical typology. Typology seems to slip into allegory when we look for Christ in every detail. The whole Old Testament speaks to Christ but we don't find Christ in the specific details. We find it in the large typological structures and events. This is the way the New Testament authors read the Old Testament. Some have called what I am saying about the seasons a part of nature typology. I think we should follow the same interpretive approach as typology in Scripture and see the seasons as representing a general overall idea. Apart from this we really would have "limited knowledge" as you say, but I think we have good grounds for seeing a general relation.
1. Remember that it is not a matter of how we think of the seasons in terms of four seasons but how Israel would have seen them. For them the calander revolves around agriculture so that it could be called the agricultural calander (note how many of the feasts relate to that as well). A key idea of agriculture is fruitfulness and life springing up.
2. Paul himself even refers to nature when talking about the resurrection. "That which you sow does not come to life unless it dies;" (1 Cor 15:36).
3. I think the general correspondence is the bleakness of sin, death, the curse and the hope of new life in Christ. For the above reasons to me it doesn't seem that we are meant to find any more correspondence than this. To go further to me seems somewhat speculative as allegory can often get.
Enough rambling... you can do what you want with it.
I had a couple of further thoughts.
1. Although other gods could be connected with the seasons I think there is a major difference (among other differences). The gods seem to be associated in a mythological sense as if the seasons were the result of a god dying and rising or battling or whatever. I am proposing that the seasons would have a sort of typological (maybe symbolic or foreshadowing) function of a historical reality to come.
2. I think there is further biblical support in that Christ's resurrection can be called the firstfruits. That fits well with seeing the seasons as tied to agriculture and Israel's feasts as having both agricultural and salvation historical significance.
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