Certain seasons or times of year draw us back into certain rhythms we’ve learned as children. The end of school, swim lessons in summer, what winter tastes like.

This season, late summer to early fall, is a season entrenched in my being and memory. It is the season where all of the hard work of planting brings forth the hard work and bounty of harvest. For me, this meant my dad in the field, and my mom back and forth between garden, kitchen, and grain truck. Picking all of the vegetables, riding up to the house on a heap of pumpkins in the back of the truck, seeing my mom working in the cool(er) evening, steam from the canner surrounding her.

I have those same impulses and rhythms within me. At this time of year my creativity and energy requires that I preserve things. There must be sterilized jars, gleaming jams, the scent of dill and brine, apples and tomato stems.

For many reasons this time of year fuels my soul.

Maybe it’s the knowledge that what I have planted and tended has produced something that sustains.

Maybe it’s the satisfaction of knowing that the work of my hands will be enjoyed later when times are colder and harder.

Maybe it’s the need to be busy, to be creative and creating as a reflection of the nature of God.

And always in the back of my mind is the understanding that this time of color and life will be lost to times of whiteness and dormancy.

This is what ministry feels like, sometimes.

We all have times when we see, hear, seek, and experience the work of God’s hands and our participation in what the Kingdom is intended to look like. Where everywhere we turn our Spirit-tuned eyes, we see the hand of God. People are changed, engaged, growing and empowered. This season of spiritual harvest that we are privileged to experience in our lives.

But there are also the times of dormancy. When what we see around us has a sameness, a quietness that isn’t always anticipatory but maybe, apathy?

While stirring glistening and mushing tomatoes today, I recognized that this preparation and preserving that I’m doing is also a practice for me spiritually.

In times of movement and harvest in ministry, what am I learning that is preparing me for other seasons ahead? What are the tools and skills, the resilience that I’m going to need for today and the days ahead?

What are the Spirit whispers in my ear that are training me to listen more deeply and fully when voices are dimmed?

And what do I carry forward with me? The things that I need to preserve now that I will need later?

What are the glistening gem jars of Spiritual fruit that I need in times of personal struggle?

Spiritual memory.

Just like opening up the jar that reminds me of the scent of summer, opening my spiritual memory of what God has done, in and through me and others, takes me back into gratitude and forward into expectation.

Though we experience dry and dormant seasons, that season will not linger and will change. God’s promises are new every morning, every season.

What we know and what we place our trust in is God’s every-renewing presence.

Though the land may rest, God does not.

Though it may seem lifeless, God breathes new life. He is the vine, the giver and creator of fruit.

I am grateful for the lessons learned at my parents’ knees. The work of all seasons, the bounty and waiting. The understanding that all is in God’s hands and we do our best to tend and steward what he has given us in every season.

We enjoy, we preserve, we prepare, and we wait in anticipation and through it all, we see God in all seasons.