Today was a beautiful fall day with cloudless blue sky, warm amber sunshine. My yard is full of beautiful songbirds and bold colored butterflies. The red maple tree up the street is being touched on its crown by Mother Nature’s watercolor brushes, displaying herself in reds and oranges, getting ready to dress up for autumn’s pageantry of leaves. I love sitting in the swing on these fall days watching the progress up and down the street of the trees coloring up.

The old water oak in my yard is always the last to buy her fall pageant dress, her favorite color for leaf dancing is yellow and not a single leaf on her tree has donned a dance recital costume. The leaves will soon be dressed and daintily pirouetting down to the ground, a fall breeze making them dance through the air. The little dogwood trees across the street are dressed and buttoned up in their cardigans of dark purple and deep red waiting to drop their leaves at a moment’s notice. I love this quote by Dodinsky. “I hope I can be the autumn leaf, who looked at the sky and lived. And when it was time to leave, gracefully it knew life was a gift.”

The greatest gift God bestows on us is life. “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being,” Genesis 2:7. God gives us breath at birth and takes our breath at death. Psalm 139:13-16 reads, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

We are all loved and prized by God, created in his image, put on earth to spread the gospel of Christ. Biblical scripture in Mark 16:15 reads, “Jesus said, Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation.” We preach the gospel everyday when we live our lives with compassion and love. Every opportunity we have to show kindness and generosity is an opportunity to share God’s gospel.

God wants to be the center of our lives. We struggle with happiness when we put ourselves in the center of our lives, living a life of self-indulgence. Our lives will be empty without God’s light and his love. His faithfulness and his grace will sustain us. Our prayers will bring hope to our lives and sunshine to our darkness.

Living for God will bring peace and true happiness into your life. Billy Graham said, “God didn’t put us here just to indulge ourselves or have a good time. God put us here for a purpose — and that purpose is to live for Him and experience the joy of His presence every day.” Put your life in God’s hands, experience the joy of being a Christian. God will take your hand and lead you to eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.

“Service is what prayer looks like when it gets up off its knees and walks around in the world.” — Michael J. Graham, S.J.