The Reason For The Season

    Photograph ©Mark Faulkner 2010

I love the change of seasons.

Fall has historically been a time of change and transition for me. Sometimes that has been a good thing, and other times? Well, not so good.

Either way, I've learned that there is always a reason or a purpose--for the seasons of life that we go through.  Some are self-inflicted, and some are a gift.  Some are meant for our discipline, while others are to refine us in the fire of adversity.

One of my favorite quotes is by Victor Frankl, who spent several years in a Nazi concentration camp:

"What is to give light must endure burning."

As a survivor of the Holocaust, Frankl endured suffering and persecution, the likes of which most of us cannot begin to comprehend.  He sought to find meaning in all forms of existence--even the most difficult, and thus a reason to continue living. The following quote gives a glimpse into Frankl's epiphany of love:

"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth - that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart:

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world still may know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way—an honorable way—in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory..."

Jesus Christ—The Light of The Word—came down to us in Love; to endure the burning fire of adversity, persecution, ridicule, torture and ultimately death on a cross meant for the worst of sinners like me. 

"Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."  (Hebrews 12:2)

The salvation of man is through love and in love.

—God is Love and Love Never Fails.