“'Norwich' – how do you pronounce it?”  asked my Orillia friends.

“'Orillia' – how do you pronounce it?” asked my Norwich friends.

A couple of weeks ago, the Norwich Citadel Band, a Salvation  Army corps (church) band from England, provided an evening of fine music, with an unmistakably Christian message, in a large church in our town.  The band, comprised of over 40 players, ranging in age from teenagers to seniors, and many of whom were related to one another ( a real family outfit), were on a tour of several towns in this part of Ontario. Their visit to Orillia was co-sponsored by our small but efficient and effective corps band and the local Silver Band, with whom the corps has a warm relationship.

It was a delightful experience for me, prompting the reverie of “seasons within seasons.”  I discovered  when reading the list of members ahead of time, that two band members were officers working at the Salvation Army Headquarters in the city, providing oversight for the varied expressions of Salvation Army ministry in that part of England.  Their country of origin is South Africa, but they had trained to be officers at the training college in London, England, in the early '90s, in a season when I had been a member of the college staff.  Robert and I had last seen them in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2003, when it had been our privilege to minister there for a very short season, at a time when they had been appointed there for a term.

Richard and Sandra stayed overnight in our home, and the conversation we shared took me back not only to those two seasons, but to a much earlier one, when I, too, had trained to be a salvation Army officer at the college in London, for Christine, one of my “session mates” is now living in retirement in the historic city of Norwich.

Their visit reminded me, too, of the literally very short “honeymoon season” which Robert and I spent in a trailer in Dunwich, a small village near to Norwich (for we were as poor as church mice in those days). It was while on my honeymoon that I paid my one and only visit to Norwich, and which, I must confess, I had not thought about for a very long time.

Earlier in the day I had had the delight of chatting with a much younger bandsman called Nick over the dinner that Robert and I were able to share with the band.  Nick's grandmother, also called Gwen, still alive and well and living in Norwich, had lived in the Wood Green area of London in the early '70s when Robert and I were also living in the area.  Now I was back in a season when my husband and I were raising two young daughters and I ran a pre-school playgroup sponsored by The Salvation Army in that inner-city area of London.

And I found myself reflecting on the fact that I am now in a season of life in which I can see the incredible hand of God in those earlier seasons of my life, in ways in which it was not quite so easy to discern when I was actually living through them.  Within each of those seasons there had been times of great joy and enormous sorrow (seasons within seasons), my responses to which, by the grace of God, have brought me to the place where I am now, not so much physically as in my deep, inner being.

This, in turn, prompted me to reflect on my present season.  I am now living an active retirement, with a variety of ministry opportunities, but wanting very much to grow old gratefully – another season within a season.

And I don't think it is by chance that within the last few days I have been reading an article in a fine Christian women's magazine entitled, “Just Between Us,” the speaking and writing of whose editor, Jill Briscoe, has helped me in the past through more than one difficult “season within  a season.”  The article is by Win Couchman, an 86-year-old retired missionary, and is entitled: “The Grace To Be Diminished.”  It speaks of the way in which God is still enlarging her spiritual life, even while the physical limitations of her age are causing other aspects of her life to be diminished.

What an encouragement it has been to me to continue to explore “seasons within seasons.”

How about you?

Colonel Gwenyth Redhead is a retired Salvation Army officer. She and her husband, Robert, have held a wide variety of appointments in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. However, her passion has always been to encourage others in creative responses to God through writing of scripts, stories, articles and lyrics (mostly to Robert's music). She has two daughters, Joanne and Corinne, and rejoices that they, too, use the creativity God has given them in ministry.