Autumn Thoughts Charles Kingsley wrote: “oh, the splendor of the universe! For many of us autumn time is the most glorious of all the year. God has dipped His paint brush in His palette of colors and splashed the hills and woods and fields with robes of saffron and crimson and gold and yellow and brown and scarlet. The maples and chestnuts and oaks vie with one another in autumnal beauty. The sumac dazzles the eye with brillant scarlet. The sunsets are too gorgeous for human description. In this amazing garden of beauty our lips voluntarily sing forth the praises of the psalmist” “Bless Jehovah, O my soul; and all this is within me, bless his holy name.” I admit to being a “fall” person. Spring is always a wonderful time as winter’s grasp on life is broken and new life emerges; and who can deny all the joys to be found in summer’s sun and the beauty and vibrancy of nature? Even winter has its moments; ice hanging on sleeping trees, snow glistening in the moonlight, or children outside enjoying winter activities? Yes, the four seasons are truly miraculous and most certainly an awesome bit of inspired creativity by God. Still, I embrace autumn with great enthusiasm. The days are still warm but now it is tempered by breezes that are cool. The leaves of the trees are beginning to show their colorful transformation. For me, fall is a time of contemplation, a time to reflect on the meaning of life and how we all fit into the dream and vision of a loving Creator. “For everything there is a season,” said the writer Ecclesiastes; how true! In front of me is a childhood memory. Growing up in the country, outside of Chicago, we received, like many here, various newspapers-for us it was the local paper carrying our town’s news (Mokena), the Joliet newspaper, and a Chicago paper. Every year, in the Chicago paper, about the time when “indian summer’ was proclaimed, a cartoon appeared. It was a double picture; the first scene depicts grandfather smoking his pipe while sitting beneath a tree. He holds an old wooden rake and standing by him is a grandson. They look out upon a cornfield filled with corn shocks; smoke curls up from a pile of burning leaves. It is dusk. The old man tells his grandson about how the spirits of Indians will appear if he looks closely at the field. The second picture shows the same scene but now a full moon is out; in the curling smoke the boy sees dancing Indians and the corn shocks have become tepees. I loved that picture. I didn’t see the American native bias which, I would guess, explains the disappearance of the cartoon’s annual appearance. That is, of course, proper as we should honor and respect our Native American friends. What is missed is the challenge to see beyond physical nature and beyond the created world we hold up to heaven and say, “Look what we have done!” In the mists of life, in the light of heaven we can see the image of the One who calls out to us lovingly and longingly. That One wants us to come close, be unafraid, and find the wisdom, courage, and love that is required to face a rather trying and difficult world. To help us is the God who is with through his Son Jesus; may he be our first step toward a new relationship with God.