Mark Buchanan, in his book, Spiritual Rhythm : being with Jesus every season of your soul, encourages his readers to look at their spiritual lives in terms of seasons. His reason is that we often become discouraged if we are not making spiritual progress. However, God may still be working but not in an obvious way. Like many trees and plants that go through seasons of growth, fruit bearing, pruning and being dormant, our lives often go through these stages too. If we can be more aware of what season we are in, we are more able to cooperate with God and learn the lessons from that season.
Mark suggests looking back over our lives and identifying particular seasons. While this didn’t really work for me I found his general premise thought provoking and contained a great deal of truth.
Having established the idea of seasons in the first part of the book, Mark in the second part of the book deals with more general aspects of Christian living against this backdrop of seasons. He touches on familiar themes of worship, Bible reading, prayer and community but does so with fresh insights and helpful suggestions.
I have read and benefited from Mark Buchanan’s many books. This one is his most personal but also the one with the most humour, which I really enjoyed.
A worthwhile and perceptive book.
