I can tell it’s still winter. Everyone seems to be fighting off some sort of winter lurgie. The slightly depressed winter mood seems to be exaggerated by a number of sad events around us at both national and local level. (Do more bad things actually happen in winter or is it just a trick of the mind? )

Our community is reeling from a hideous car crash that claimed the life of a local teenager. As parents, our hearts are overflowing with sympathy for the family whose 18-year-old son died. He was a passenger in a car that collided head on with a roadside tree in the early hours of a recent wet Friday morning.

It’s the second road tragedy to hit this family in as many years. In 2009 their older son also died when the car he was driving collided with a power pole. I can’t even begin to imagine the hell these parents must be going through.

Then there’s the lovely friend of mine who went for a routine mammogram only to be told the numbing news she has breast cancer. Within days she underwent a mastectomy and is starting chemo soon. Instead of enjoying this season of her life, children grown, she is living with a daily dread.

An older friend, a wonderful mentor to us, was admitted to hospital this week with new heart problems. He has an amazing faith – it’s his patience that’s being tested as he lies waiting for various procedures, uncertain of the future.

Then there are the courageous people of Christchurch who stoically continue to reconstruct their city and their lives in the aftermath of the quakes, now hindered by often freezing temperatures and spasmodic southerly storms.

There are the unstoppable climatic seasonal cycles in our world and there are the changing seasons we all face in our own lives, as well as seasons in our faith.

But one thing is for certain – at some fundamental level it has to be easier to weather the storms that the seasons of life throw at each of us if we hold tight to our faith in God.

– Fran Pardon