NEW YORK — Fresh blueberries — local, affordable, not trucked in from 3,000 miles away — have hit the shops and street vendors. Life just got better.

It feels magical. Just days ago, these blue morsels were absent, then the season changed, and now they are here.

Next, we hope, will come the magic of sweet corn and real peaches.

For the most part, we moderns think we have conquered the seasons. Thanks to ample electricity, we can live as we want to live all year long without submitting to heat or cold, daylight or darkness, rain or shine. Things either work or don’t work. If they don’t, call a repairman.

Blueberries, however, speak to the reality of agricultural seasons. Rock-hard California berries in January at $5 for a half-pint don’t count as fresh produce. Neither do tomatoes that appear to have done their entire growing cycle on board an 18-wheeler.

Some other seasons prevail, too, such as the nine-month school calendar, fiscal years, tax-filing deadlines, and election cycles. Some find the church calendar a persuasive presentation of reality.

It is tempting to view all of time as circular and therefore predictable and controllable. In reality, however, time is linear and malleable, volatile and unpredictable. The seasons of faith tend to be the seasons of our individual lives, not some seasonality imposed by church. As farmers know, every crop year is a new year, not a repeat or do-over.

Life brings us to seasons of joy, and then to seasons of loss, and then to what a Carmelite friend calls the “hard and lonely place,” and then to serenity. And back and forth, without apparent pattern.

For a time, we feel surrounded by friends, and then the season changes and the phone never rings. Our marriages go through seasons, in which they hit rocky patches we didn’t see coming, then inexplicably feel warm and fresh. So do our bodies, our careers, our emotional well-being.

Rarely do those seasons follow predictable paths. Rather, we wake up one day and find that blueberries have arrived — or the partnership feels fresh again, the body feels sore and tired, the spirit quickened or depleted. Our work is to harvest whatever the season brings.

Our journey with God might seem an annual cycle of religious seasons. But I think our journey is a life lifted up to God. If today I feel discouraged, my prayer is for boldness. If I feel elated, my prayer is for gratitude and humility. If wind and sea seem overwhelming, my prayer is for calm.

I know that early Christians made much of predictable cycles and calendars, routinized actions and annual festivals. They promised order at a time when reality seemed overwhelming and threatening. We built institutions to perpetuate those cycles.

We know more now, however, and have other ways of seeking order. What we yearn for now is love amid relentless enmity, hope amid suffering and decay, promise and goodness amid corruption.

Faith communities serve best when they look beyond their calendars and festivals and stop trying to fit human needs into familiar cycles. Jesus took reality as it came, with little regard for seasonality or cycle.

Blueberries are exciting — not because they came the same time last year, but because they are fresh today.

(Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the author of “Just Wondering, Jesus,” and the founder of the Church Wellness Project, http://www.churchwellness.com. His Web site is http://www.morningwalkmedia.com.)