The seasons are changing. Can you feel it?
Technically it is still fall, but it doesn’t exactly feel like it outside. Highs have been in the mid-40s this week. There is a definite chill in the air. You can tell that winter is around the corner, even though it doesn’t actually begin until a month from now.
I have really enjoyed my first fall in North Carolina. I have never lived in a place where the trees change in such tremendous color. A few weeks ago, Sarah and I took a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Asheville. For miles and miles, almost as far as you could see, the entire countryside was a mixture of different colored leaves.
During the fall, the change in colors reminds me that change can be beautiful. Change is something to celebrate. However, I’m not always as eager to celebrate change when it comes to my own life.
I like routines. I like things to be consistent. Change naturally pushes us outside of our comfort zone. It prods us into new, sometimes uncomfortable areas.
I wonder if you can relate to that? Perhaps you are dealing with a change of job, or a change in your family structure, or a change in your expectations of how you thought life would turn out.
My encouragement to you is to search for the beauty within the change.
The author of Ecclesiastes reminds us that there is a season for everything:
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:”
The author then begins to list examples of changes that we experience in our lives:
A time to weep and a time to laugh.
A time to be born and a time to die.
A time to plant and a time to uproot.
A time to search and a time to give up.
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
-Selections from Ecclesiastes 3
Enjoy the remaining weeks of fall, and work to embrace whatever season of life that you are in.
See you on Sunday!
-Pastor David
