The sky is as blue as a robin’s eggs this morning, the wind whispers of cooler days, the clouds are stacked on top of each other in grays and blues and purples, their crowns kissed bright white by the sun. The leaves are loosening their holds on the old oaks’ branches, putting on their cardigans of earthy yellows colors, warm in the sunshine’s rays. The squirrels are gathering their acorns, filling their cheeks with sunflower seeds, biting the chestnut burrows open, hiding the nuts for the coming winter. The season of autumn is a harvest of colors. The trees dress themselves in golds and oranges, purples, reds and yellows, and their leaves let go and pirouette to the ground. The butterflies in their yellow, black, and orange dance costumes perform their fall recitals on the fading zinnias and petunia blossoms in my garden. “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever,” Isaiah 40:8.

God gave us the seasons as he designed our world. Just as he promised to never send a flood to destroy the earth, God gave us the seasons to set our world in order, to give us a rhythm in life. Ecclesiastes 3:1 reads, “To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.” The summer is a time of growing, a time of high heat and humidity for us in the South; the fall, a time of harvest as the landscape is dressed with deep blue skies and the seasonal beauty by Mother Nature’s watercolors; the winter, a time of hibernation, a time of quiet cool dreary days, dormant growth on the landscape punctuated by daffodils and crocus; and the spring, a time of rebirth as the earth awakens and her greening begins. We celebrate each season and each is full of joy and sadness, struggle and peace, birth and loss. Genesis 8:22 says, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” 

In our modern world we’re not as conscious of the seasons as we’re not dependent on what we grow and what we harvest. We’re not chopping wood to keep our fireplaces and wood stoves going. Our grocery stores have what we need. Most of us aren’t milking cows or going down in the cellar getting canned vegetables for supper. The way the world is turning now we might all need to grow a vegetable garden and learn how to can and process our harvests. We panic when the power goes out. When the internet is down we don’t exist. Technology controls our lives. We should pray for peace in our world, for the world to stop spinning so fast. Pray for others to learn of Jesus and his harvest of faith.

As Jesus traveled around he spoke of a spiritual harvest asking in prayer for the Lord to send more labors to his harvest. “Let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up,” Galatians 6:9. God wants us to harvest our faith and share it with others. We have to nurture our faith to keep it growing. We have to water and fertilizer the seeds of faith in our hearts through worship, prayer and thanksgiving. We have to read God’s scripture and follow his commandments. When we harvest our faith then we can share our bounty of faith with others. “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers,” Galatians 6:10. God wants us to sow our seeds of faith with others and help them harvest his grace.

“Each day of my life I am sowing seeds that one day I will harvest.” — Gautama Buddha