The Preacher of Ecclesiastes reminds us there is a season for everything. Well, this year’s winter season has long outlived its welcome. With spring officially set to start at 10:46 this morning (Friday, March 20), winter needs to move along. At least in northeastern Indiana, it has been a long winter. Our first flakes were seen in early November with some pretty serious snowfall by the end of the month. And, yes, as I write on Wednesday, March 18, the forecast has had snow in it. Four, going on five months of cold. Winter has taken far more than its allotted 91 days of calendar space.
By the rules of the astronomical calendar measured by equinoxes and solstices, each of our four seasons lasts 91 days and a few odd hours and minutes. But measured by the times for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1), seasons last as long as they need to last. This can be disconcerting to us.
Seasons of grieving should last as long as the deep grieving lingers. We are bothered, however, and sometimes for good reason, when a widow marries too soon after her husband’s death or a widower is still mourning so many months after his wife’s funeral. But it may be that a long season or a short season of grief has lasted exactly as long as it needs to last. Vacations are over too soon, and it seems like forever until summer recess begins. We feel cheated when our loved ones do not survive the time given in a prognosis after diagnosis and think it a miracle when they outlive that prognosis. Some of us get over things quickly, others of us with less haste.
The season of renewal in the life of a congregation might be agonizingly slow in coming and the season of joy and hope with a new ministry far too short.
Most seasons in our lives lack solstice or equinox to mark their coming and their going. They last as long as the matter for which they are given needs in order to be resolved or healed, ended or begun.
Apparently, the winter of 2025-2026 required four and a half, please, not five, months to run the course it was given to run.
The Preacher surveys life with its matters and their seasons and concludes there is “nothing better for (us) than to be joyful and to do good as long as (we) live; also that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil—this is God’s gift to man” (Ecclesiastes 3:12). This is not resignation to the vanity of life, but submission to the Sovereign of life.
Measured by the equinox, spring begins at exactly 10:46 this morning. Measured by a time for every matter under heaven, winter may last a bit longer. Should winter last until Easter, we are to be joyful and do good, even eat and drink and take pleasure in our toil.
Forecast for tomorrow is a little windy but a high of 66 degrees. Maybe the new season has begun.