From Genesis chapters 16, 20, 25

Hagar the maid was treated quite badly by her employer. So she decided to leave the rich household she worked for, perhaps the only real home she had ever known, and set out for the wilderness hoping for something better. The angel of the Lord found her and told her to turn around and go back and submit to her employer. But, she went back with the promise that she would bear a son and be the mother of many descendants, (a real blessing back then). She has her son and names him Ishmael, and for many years they both enjoy the benefits that such a rich household can afford them.

But, without any notice and for no fault of her own, Hagar and her son are handed some bread and a container of water and are forced to leave. They head for the wilderness and when the water is all gone, Hagar, thinking they will both soon die, sits down and cries. God sees and hears all this and speaks from heaven declaring that Hagar’s son Ishmael will become a great nation. God then shows her a well from which they both drink. By the grace of God they make a life in that wilderness and Ishmael becomes a great archer. Hagar acquires a wife for him from Egypt and he becomes a great man and the father of 12 princes of 12 tribes, and ultimately a great nation as per the promise made so many years before.

Life happens to us in a vast variety of seasons. Every season is by design and together they progressively work to insure the fulfillment of every promise and the completion of every work. Hagar and Ishmael's lives were fashioned by such Divinely orchestrated seasons. As with us, the seasons of promise and fulfillment, peace and upheaval, abundance and lack, flight and return are all masterfully crafted and lovingly applied with our consumate perfection in mind, and for us the sum total of perfection is Christlikeness.

Every experience to the smallest detail, bitter and sweet, is suited to insure the emergence of the image of Christ within the soul surrendered to the Master's will. Dear ones, God will perfect the work He started in us, Paul was confident of this, ( Phil. 1:6). Let’s not fear the seasons. Jesus is with us and He's loving us right now, in all seasons.

Awesome.