Seasons and Sabbaths 3

We find it so amazing that people survived and thrived without the technology we have today. Before we created maps, map quest, or the GPS God provided seasonal skies and natural landmarks to guide us on our journeys. People got around. They traveled long distances without cell phones or GPS.

Today, we use more culturally and technologically relevant imagery because children are more familiar with the cultural/technologically relevant than they are with outdoor imagery with its times and seasons. I understand the reasons for trading outdoor imagery for examples that children are more familiar with. But what if we take the opportunity to use outdoor imagery in scripture to learn about God and rediscover the outdoor life He created with all it's sensory treasures? What if better understanding the outdoor imagery of scripture will help us better understand our Creator through all that He's created and better understand the Word He's spoken? There are things to learn from what our hands create but as Christian Educators can we learn more about God studying what His own hands have made than we can by studying what our hands have made? I don't know. I'd like to think so.

Maybe writing this is hard because the tangle of elements is so interdependent. Seasons, work, rest, life, care, God, Creation, man and man's creative accomplishments . Maybe it's hard because we can't separate all the threads. Maybe they were never intended to be sorted and separated. Maybe it's not unlike ecological systems. You try to isolate an element and you may see effects in places you didn't expect. You may even see major effects from things that you thought we just small and insignificant.

If you lay aside all the traditional understandings of times and seasons what are the seasons in your child's life? How does he/she tell time of day or time of year? Watch or ask them. You might be surprised. Maybe it doesn't matter but maybe it does.

Interesting times we live in.