’Tis the season … to finish the course

Christmas? No, it’s the season to fight against the urge to quit right before the completion of the season.
As students prepare for those final days of school, the urge to drop out or give up buzzes around like an annoying fly. I hear it within my own children as they prepare for these last few weeks of school. Comments like, “Why do I need to go today, we’re not going to do anything?”
I immediately flash back to my school days and the battle within myself at the end of each year. Why is it that we humans want to give up right before we finish?
This must be why Paul encouraged us in Scripture with words like, “And let us not be weary in well-doing: For in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9). Also, in 2 Timothy 4:7, he writes, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” HA! He even used the word “course.” Could you get any better wording to support “your lecture” to your children about giving it all they have until the end? I should say not!
Yet still my heart has compassion because I know the challenge and the battle that lies within one who must press through these feelings.
Even our Savior, Jesus, struggled. I think back on Scripture about Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Matthew 26:39 reads, “And He went a little farther, and fell on His face, and prayed, saying, ‘O My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou wilt.’ ”
Talk about a struggle of seeing it through. And His course held much more self denial than our mere school courses.
Ecclesiastes speaks of seasons for everything: a time to be born, a time to die, a time to laugh, a time to weep, a time to plant, a time to harvest, a time to speak, a time to be silent — and the list goes on. What wisdom King Solomon offers to us for each day of our lives.
We must discern the season we are in, and take full advantage of it. We must not yearn for another season, or become restless and live in discontentment. Paul writes in Philippians 4:11, “Not that I speak in respect of want: For I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.”
Paul found peace in whatever season he was facing.
You may be going through a season in the natural, such as being single and in your 30s thinking, “There is no man left on the planet for me,” or you may be the mother of three children all under the age of three thinking, “Will I ever have time for me?”
The challenge for each of us is to grab hold of the peace of God to carry us through each season.
I count it a great honor to be granted the privilege to have a voice in the lives of others, especially my children. I help them prepare and complete each season of their lives. Each of us, whether knowingly or not, has a voice into the lives of those around us. 
Jackie Vaggalis, wife of Destiny Worship Center’s senior pastor, Steve Vaggalis, is the mother of two boys, and her hobbies are shopping, golf and spending time with her family. She can be reached at jackie@destinyworship.com