Appointed seasons

When the kings of the earth seemed to be the only powers that mattered, Daniel said something that put them all in their place: it is God who changes the times and the seasons; He removes kings and sets up kings. The rise of one empire and the fall of another, which looked to everyone else like raw history happening, was the work of a hand on the calendar. Centuries later Paul stands on the Areopagus and says it to a city full of philosophers: the God who made every nation from one blood has determined the appointed seasons, and the very bounds of where they would live. Nothing is loose. Nothing is unscheduled.

Upheaval almost always feels like the opposite of this. It feels like chaos slipping its leash, like the times running wild. But Scripture keeps insisting that the seasons are appointed, not accidental. The roughly five-hundred-year beat that Phyllis Tickle traced in the church's great rummage sales is, on this reading, not history misbehaving. It is the rhythm of the God who governs the times, renewing His people on a schedule He set before any of them were born.

There is a particular terror in believing your upheaval is random — that it fell on you out of a meaningless sky, signifying nothing, answerable to no one. If that were true, the only sane response would be to brace and endure. But it is not true. Your shaking did not catch God off guard, and it is not happening in a vacuum where meaning has drained away. He changes times and seasons; this season of yours is one He appointed, and appointed seasons have edges.

That is the quiet mercy of the word season. A season is bounded. It came in on a date and it will go out on one, and the One who set both is not anxious about either. You may not be able to see the calendar; you are not meant to. But there is a hand on it, and the hand belongs to the God who has done this before and will do it again on time. Your upheaval is not loose in the world. It is held.