Colored Horizon

It's Sunday morning. Ken has returned from bringing our grandson to Sunday School or as it is now called, "Faith Walkers". When I rose this morning, the thought popped into my head that I had forgotten to bring retreat tickets to a key lady so I immediately got ready for the day and drove the five miles to her house. On my return I was struck again by the beauty of the trees. I don't know if in past years I was so busy with my work schedule that I failed to see it but this year has been particularly beautiful and the color has lasted for a very long time. Last week I posted some pictures of the trees down the road on which we live. Today, those trees are standing truck and branches with no leaves. BUT! Behind them, the slower to turn trees have stolen the show. There is every shade of color imaginable between green, yellow, orange and red hanging on those trees. In the middle of the fall colors stand the pines, tall and proud with branches of their forever green. The maples drip of golden yellow and the oaks; the oaks must be many different varieties in the woods around our area because the color is vastly different from oak to oak. Across the street from our house is an electric line. The trees on the other side of the line have been trimmed so that all their branches are the same length. As I drove up to our driveway, I smiled to see a section of yellow, then one of burnt red, then orange and then yellow again. Each section being a different tree yet grown together tightly.

As I drove past a blueberry farmer's place this morning, I noticed the straight rows of berry bushes, all in a hue of burnt or dark red. The mass of color was impressive. The harvest of blueberries is over for another year. The majority of corn and soy beans are out of the fields safely harvested. It's all indication that the warm weather is over and the cold is to come. I can almost see a carton of myself with a lasso around November 4, 2007 hanging on for dear life because I don't want the serene beauty and warm sun we have enjoyed for weeks now to leave us. But, hang on as I would, the cold will come. God has told us that as long as the earth endures there will be summer and winter, seedtime and harvest. The earth is ready to take a rest. Before we know it, the calendar will have again flipped to spring. Okay, Lord, bring the winter on, so that springtime will again come. We thank you that you are a dependable God and that you have ordered Your world in such a predictible way. And by the way, thank you from the bottom of our hearts that when the winters of our lives come, you restore us to springtime and show us your mercy again.