there is a season

It finally feels and looks like fall here...after endless days of rain and even winter-like temperatures, we're seeing blue skies and crisp cool days, and the leaves are really starting to change.

I like fall. Summer will always be my first love, but fall is a pretty close second...I like like it. I was hiking at Radnor Lake yesterday thinking about autumn. The fall makes me nostalgic for things like apple picking and cider, canoeing and bonfires, for New England color (you haven't seen leaves change til you've seen them change north of the Mason-Dixon) and my grandmother's apple pie. The fall makes that corny line in You've Got Mail about bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils seem not quite as hokey.

But the fall also makes me a little sad...I am not a fan of winter, which in Tennessee is not so much a wonderland as it is a dreary gray mess. So while the fall is fun and beautiful, its also a reminder that winter is coming and another warm season has passed. Change—and not necessarily for the better—is on the horizon.

Isn't it sweet how pretty the transition from something I love to something I don't is...how beauty is found in one season dying. I think it's a testament to the mercy of God, that He softens the blow of the change by making it glorious. The leaves could just turn brown, or shrivel and drop overnight and leave us with the starkness of winter; the light could just disappear or turn gray and the clouds never clear. Instead we are given the splendor of the fall colors, the golden autumn light, and the crystal skies—a reminder that God is faithful in the heat of summer, in the change of autumn, and through the coming winter.

Summer and Winter

and Springtime and Harvest

Sun, moon, and stars in their courses above

Join with all nature in manifold witness

to Thy Great Faithfulness, Mercy and Love

--Great Is Thy Faithfulness