Seasons

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot..."  Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

Lately I have been thinking a lot about seasons.  Nature, life, relationships - they all have seasons, a natural order of things.  Each season brings with it preparation for what is to come, and reminders of what has been.

In nature, the current season is Autumn here in the United States.  That brings cooler weather, bright colored leaves falling to the ground, pumpkins and harvest parties and apple cider, football, Thanksgiving, and preparation for winter.

In life, I guess my current season is somewhere around Spring - possibly summer, although I feel like I'm not quite there yet... I am young but I am growing and maturing and growing roots deep into the foundations that my parents and mentors have given to me.

In my relationship with God, however, I am in an interesting season now, or so it seems to me.  This seems to be a season of tearing down, of throwing out, of uprooting things that have grown in places they should not be.  A season of purification, correction, and discipline.... a season of preparation.

Sunday started the season of Advent, or the joyful preparation and expectation of the arrival of Christ - both in his birth those many years ago, and in his triumphant return.  Each new year that I celebrate Advent, it is dearer and more special to me.  This year, I find it touching that while I am in a season of preparation and purification, the time has come for the church to begin a season of joyful preparation as well.  It feels personal this year.

I was reading in Leviticus about the scape goat sacrifice.  Have you read about that before?  I feel as if I had, but for some reason, it never hit home for me like it did recently.

Leviticus 16:20-22 “When Aaron has finished making atonement for the Most Holy Place, the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall bring forward the live goat. He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness."

In a devotional I was reading, it said to imagine being Aaron and having a live goat in front of you - the devotional suggested that, if you had a pet, to place your hands on the pet in the same way Aaron was instructed by God, and to "confess to God your acts of rebellion, your bad attitudes, and your harsh thoughts about others." and to try and experience the feeling of transferring your sins to this animal.
Now, this isn't the way that things work today - we know this - but the devotional was trying to get me to grasp the gravity of this action - and I got it.

I was sitting next to my sweet Daphne, and I couldn't do it - I couldn't imagine transferring my sins to her, because she didn't do anything wrong.  She was not responsible - I was.  I tried to conceptualize being in that place with Aaron and transferring sins to a goat, but I couldn't do that either.  That goat was innocent, too.  The thought brought tears to my eyes.  The scape goat wasn't even killed.  It was led off into the wilderness and set free.  But my scape goat - he was killed.  He died a terrible, painful, humiliating death for sins that he did not commit.  When I think about that - that the son of God, the creator of the Universe - took my sin and my shame and my humiliation and died for me?  I love him more... and I love me less... and I know how much I need him, and how much his sacrifice means for me.

May you grasp the depth of his love for you during this season of your life and in this season of Advent.


♥