Tag Archives: G.K. Chesterton

A Season for Faith

Spring is almost here again! Here in Georgia, we are already enjoying our first blooms—daffodils, irises, redbuds, camellias, and more are brightening Atlanta neighborhoods. Even in our own yard the beauty—some of it “volunteer” and some of it intentional—is plentiful. Here are some glimpses in photographs I took this morning.

The turning of the seasons is a time of revelation. But what does the turning of the seasons reveal? Your answer to this question will reveal the state of your heart. Two people can look at same thing and see something very different.

Some people observe the ceaseless rhythms of the seasons and see only mindless, physical cycles—matter in motion through space and time. They see nothing of God. Here is how Peter describes such people:

Scoffers will come in the last days… They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” (2 Pet. 3:3-4)

Others look at the same seasonal rhythms and catch a renewed glimpse of a faithful Creator who sustains all that he has made, caring for it until he brings it to consummation. These people remember God’s promise to Noah, given after Noah had emerged from a catastrophic flood when all such gracious natural rhythms had been upended:

“While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (Gen. 8:22)

Strikingly, both groups observe the same reality—that things are “continuing as they were,” with patterns like seasons that do “not cease.” And yet, while observing the same phenomena, what they actually see is very different.

Paul tells us that all people are without excuse, for God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20). But some people have “suppressed” this truth (Rom. 1:18). They no longer see God through his creation. Both Paul and Peter warn that these people, having lost sight of God, must now serve “the lusts of their hearts” (Rom. 1:24), “following their own sinful desires” (2 Pet. 3:3). Their end is wrath and death.

The ones who see God in the turning of the seasons, however, live “lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God” (2 Pet. 3:11-12). They “honor [God] as God” and “give thanks to him” (Rom. 1:21) as they watch the snow disappear and the buds burst anew with familiar green. Each virgin leaf, though matching millions of leaves from centuries past, brings them fresh evidence of the Ancient of Days. The turning seasons remind them that their heavenly Father will never again “strike down every living creature” as he did in the flood (Gen. 8:21). They know he will preserve this world until he creates “new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells” (2 Pet. 3:13). For this, through every season, they longingly wait.

Oh, but the turning of the seasons requires no Guiding Hand, right? Isn’t it all just a matter of planets obeying inertia and gravity, and living creatures obeying the directions of their DNA?

Not so fast, O my soul.

With amazing regularity, in a predictability of cycles, meals appear on my table. Most of the food has been cooked or baked. In the process, each loaf of bread, cut of meat, or bowl of vegetables has undergone very complex and yet very natural transformative chemical reactions. The rising of bread, the browning of meat, the softening of vegetables, the hardening of eggs—each follows laws of nature as surely as do spinning planets and spring plants. Yet I do not doubt the loving hand of my wife behind each natural process. Is it not equally reasonable to believe that a loving God is behind the turning of seasons? Being a spiritual being, our Creator hides himself better than my wife does, but “in him all things hold together,” we are told (Col. 1:17).

Chesterton pondered the turning of days and saw a young, playful Father:

Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. The repetition in Nature may not be a mere recurrence; it may be a theatrical encore.1

Maybe monotony is no proof of atheistic materialism. Maybe daily cycles and turning seasons both spring from a playful Father “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim. 6:17).

If it stretches your adult imagination to picture God as playful, then at least ponder James’ claim that all God’s good gifts, including the gift of seasons, spring from a divine heart that knows “no variation”:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. (James 1:17)

Is this what you see revealed in the unvarying turning of the seasons—an unvarying Father? Or does the turning of the seasons reveal that your heart is unable to see?

As I near my mid-forties, I find it easier to see how some lose faith mid-journey. My youthful dreams of doing great things for God (though I seldom knew exactly what) now appear quaint. I increasingly feel great admiration for those who “only” have a record of a lifetime of faithfulness toward God and humanity.

“Life has seasons,” I like to say, usually as a solace for hard times. But is there Anyone supervising the seasons? Or are the seasons of nature and of my life merely mechanistic or random rotations?

Will I let myself fade into the fancy that my life is Fatherless and futile? Am I only able to see mindless matter moving through space and time? Or will I allow the turning of the seasons to renew my faith?

Will I bend to examine a familiar new flower? Will I note the spring’s first sounding of an old bird song? And will I breathe new thanksgivings—each breath of thanks pumping fresh faith into my lungs?

The Book of Nature points me to a powerful heavenly Father. The Book of Scripture tells me he is a “faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love… to a thousand generations” (Deut. 7:9). I will trust him with the unending seasons of our lives.


What are you thankful for as Spring nears again? What are you doing to renew your vision of God through the cycling seasons of life? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

  1. G. K. Chesterton, ‘The Ethics of Elfland,’ Orthodoxy (House of Stratus, 2001), p. 41.

Thirty-Three Years: A Life [Poem by Mom]

Have you been impatiently waiting for the monthly poem from my mom? No, we have not forgotten. Here it is, just in time to help you remember the death and life of Christ.

God bless you as you read Mom’s poem and meditate on Christ.


I remember as a young girl, lying on the grass, gazing at the immense blue summer sky above me, and trying to grasp in the “grain of sand” that was my mind, the concept of eternity. As the clouds moved lazily overhead I pondered the puzzle of eternity past and eternity future, tried to envision the vast expanses of “time” implied, and wondered which would be more irrational, that God should have never begun—how could that be!—or that He should have a beginning—but then how and why could He have begun? I would try to stretch my mind across the eons of eternity from past to future until I felt my brain would explode.

G. K. Chesterton said that “poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea… the result is mental exhaustion. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet desires… a world to stretch himself in… asks only to get his head into the heavens… the logician… seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head which splits.”

The Scriptures tell us it is “by faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God…not…of things which are visible” (Heb. 11:3, NKJV, italics added).

I was nearing fifty years of age when I wrote the following poem about Christ’s time on earth, and my brain felt no more adequate then of grasping the puzzle of Christ’s work of salvation than it was earlier with the concept of eternity.

The puzzle: Did Jesus come to live or to die for us? His death was only efficacious because of His Resurrection and because of His perfect life. His life alone could not have saved us. He needed a body for the very purpose of dying for us. Remission of sin demands blood shed, a death, a sacrifice.

Romans 5:1 says we are “justified by faith” in Him “who was delivered up [to death] because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification” (Rom. 4:25, NKJV, italics added).

Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways! (Rom. 11: 33, NASB)

In humble faith I celebrate and trust in the life and death and resurrection of my Risen Lord and Saviour as all-sufficient for my eternal salvation!

—Elaine Gingrich, March 1, 2016


THIRTY-THREE YEARS: A LIFE

He came to die, but first He came to live.
Not as some faceless, flat protagonist
Who dies in a pale story, never missed
By readers. No, our captured minds would give
The world to know this Man. The finest sieve
Can catch no fault in Him. Go down the list
From “healed a leper” to “by traitor kissed,”
Then watch Him die unjustly, yet forgive.

Here was a man to tower above men,
With strength to calm the stormy Galilee,
With touch more tender than a baby’s sigh.
Here was a man deserves to live again,
A man to love! We turn the page to see
The script. He lives! But first He came to die.

—Elaine Gingrich, May 2, 2000


While this was not her intent, Mom’s insight about the need to connect the life and the death of Christ has been the subject of some recent discussion in scholarly circles.

N.T. Wright, for example, wrote a book called How God Became King: The Forgotten Story of the Gospels. Wright argues that evangelicals and other confessional Christians, influenced by the pattern of the ancient creeds, have tended to emphasize the virgin birth and the cross of atonement while skipping over the life of Christ with his radical kingdom teachings. Liberal theologians, however, influenced by post-Enlightenment critical scholarship and embarrassed by the miraculous elements of Jesus’ birth and death, have emphasized the exemplary power of his human life.

But true Christianity needs both—the kingdom teachings and life of Jesus on the one hand, and also his miraculous, saving death and resurrection. In Wright’s words, we need both kingdom and cross. (While I have not read this book, I have listened about three times to this lecture Wright gave on the same topic. Highly recommended.)

Wright is a scholar of the first rank, but his book above is written for a general audience. Pastors have also written on this subject, such as Tim Chester in his 2015 book Crown of Thorns: Connecting Kingdom and Cross. (I have not read this book, but am familiar enough with Chester to feel confident it will be a useful read.)

I am excited to see scholars and pastors grasp this insight. But understanding exactly how Jesus’ life and death relate together to save us and shape our lives is secondary to simply trusting and following him. So it’s okay if you identify with what Mom said after I shared some of the above with her:

You can develop the deep debates and I will stick to the simpler faith foundation. 🙂

I am deeply grateful to my mother for helping to keep my faith foundation firm, both in my youth and to this day.


For the rest of the poems in this monthly series, see here.

And if you enjoyed this poem, leave a comment here for Mom, or send her an email at MomsEmailAddressImage.php.  Thanks!