I am not going to talk about politics today. I think the nation could use a little detox. Instead, I do want to talk about the leaves outside my office window.
Fall is, without any shred of doubt, my favorite season. And I have had the amazing privilege of living in four entirely different states whose hillsides each come alive with blazon color when the nights of October come quicker and colder. In New Hampshire, Oregon, Western North Carolina, and now, North Georgia, fall comes every year like a best friend visiting from a distant country. We have not talked much throughout the year, but we are so comfortable with each other that the conversation can simply pick up where it left off as if no time or distance has ever passed. Fall causes me to become contemplative. I slow down. While summer fans adventure, activity and long nights that extend well past bedtime, fall ushers in a season of quiet for me. When I get the first glimpse of color something almost spiritual ignites within me and I feel as if most days I long to be walking, intentionally slow, along a path in the woods with no destination in mind, and no clock to obey.
But I also love fall because it is a reminder to me that time is not standing still and that change is possible. There have been seasons of my own life that have felt quite endless. Struggles, fights, battles and wars that appear to have no end in sight; wounds that feel as they will never heal; addictions that look like they will never shake free; attitudes that haven’t shifted in months; bitterness that is only getting more bitter; depression that is only getting darker, and a loneliness becoming increasingly lonely.
Then I find one morning that as I peer across the steam lifting off my mug of coffee that out the back window I can see the faintest hint of orange, or yellow or crimson red gathering around the edge of a tree on the boundary of the property. That night as I sit on the back porch I recognize that it is darker at this hour than it was the night before. Maybe later in that same week my wife suggests we turn the heat on. My kids spend the weekend sorting through boxes in storage to look for their favorite sweatshirt that has been packed away for the summer. Windows spend more time closed. And soon, very soon, I will see my breath in the air as I drive to work amidst a dazzling display of forests on fire with color that stands even more brilliant against the crystal blue sky hovering overhead.
Fall is the glorious and gracious annual reminder for us that you will not always be who you are today, that this too shall pass, and “that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns” (Phil. 1:6).
In you…in me…in our country…in our world.
Amen.
