Faithful Through Every Change

 

On Friday morning, I caught a lull in the rain and wind and took my Bible and coffee to the front porch for a few minutes. There was still enough wind to coax a few yellow leaves off the trees, and I enjoyed watching them dance about in the air before finally touching down. If you’ve been a reader of this blog for a few years, the ideas you’re about to read are not new, but every year I feel compelled to again mention God’s faithfulness in bringing about each season in its time.

We’re all familiar with the passage in Ecclesiastes 3:

 

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:

 A time to be born,
And a time to die;
A time to plant,
And a time to pluck what is planted;

 

All summer I’ve been enjoying “pluck[ing] what is planted,” and soon that season will be over. Right now there are still tomatoes in my back yard, and I have one more watermelon on the vine. On Friday afternoon, I pulled up some chives growing in the wrong place, cut them up, and dried them in the oven. In the coming months, they will flavor potatoes and eggs.

 

Leaves just starting to turn will provide a beautiful distraction in another month or so, and the goldenrod will continue to show off for a few more weeks. My hummingbirds have not yet headed south, but I believe they will any day now.

 

How do I know that what I’m predicting is true? Because God has built into this world a picture—indeed many pictures—of His faithfulness. Here are a few passages to ponder:

 

He appointed the moon for seasons;
The sun knows its going down. (Psalm 104:19)

He changes times and seasons; he deposes kings and raises up others. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning.(Daniel 2:21)

 

As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.” (Genesis 8:22)

 

I find great comfort in the regular, predictable changes from day to night and summer to fall. These regular changes are an expression of God’s constancy. He is the eternally faithful one.

 

I acknowledge the obvious changes in our climate patterns over the past few years, but even so, God is keeping the world on course and turning as He created it to do.

 

In the coming weeks, I will enjoy watching the falling leaves and the changing sky, and in a few months, God willing, I will say with Solomon, See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone (Song of Songs 2:11).

 

--Sherry Poff