The fall, a time of tailgating, football, pumpkin treats, and the fading smell of freshly sharpened pencils. This fall finds our family at more soccer games than football because our Emily is playing Upward Soccer with her good Coach Dad.

This fall also finds us saying goodbye to Little E for four days a week as he goes off to visit his biological parents respectively. I am fighting this one however as any sane person will admit that a two and a half year old boy needs a steady home…not a rotation of three. The joys and struggles of foster care are abundant this harvest season. However, this little boy is abundantly worth both the joys and struggles we sow in hopes of an eternal harvest of joy.

From the acorn caps scattered under our feet to the delicious caramel apples gathered in the grocery store, signs of fall are everywhere.

Finally, as the fall season approaches on the 22nd of September, the fall of man also is on full display… everywhere. Diagnosis after diagnosis, declaration of judges in federal and local courts, and a call to weapons of war resound in our ears constantly reminding us that this earth is in a state of decay.

As we face the decay of life, season after fleeting season, we must remember the hope to which we are called. Ponder the hope of a new heaven and a new earth. We are to seek the changing of the eternal seasons from finite time to the infinite realization of relationship between God and man. We long for the return of God’s created order to earth. We long to see the miraculous a midst the fall.

We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming. (Timothy Keller, The Reason for God, p. 99, emphasis mine)

This season as we tromp crunch, crunch, crunch through the dead and decaying leaves, let’s also look up and admire the blazing colors of the glorious changing of seasons and pray for the changing of the eternal season to come.

As we hear the acorns falling plunk, plunk, plunk on the rooftops and the hoods of cars, let’s pray in turn for the miraculous falling of the Holy Spirit over the multitude of hurting people in our spheres.

May this change in season tune our souls to seek the eternal season to come.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. ~Ecclesiastes 3