Every single one.
This season gives me energy like no other season can. The colors do wonder for my senses and I feel lighter. I was enraptured in the light falling through the leaves of a tree this morning and stopped to take pictures!
That the atmosphere in this small town I live in could go from stifling and sticky to cool and crisp in a single afternoon feels almost like magic. It always surprises, but it shouldn't. It happens every year.
Change, I am learning, is the most predictable thing in my life.
Whether it's the seasons or relationships; my tastes or my reading habits--something is always changing. I can not control the changing but I can choose to revel in it, to rejoice. The trick is to begin rejoicing now.
Not just in anticipation of returning home, but in the quirky oddness of being so very away. Every season, EVERY one, has its charms. My prayer is, under Christ, to learn to love them all.
But here is the the light in fall!
There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on,
and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.
The sunshine is peculiarly genial;
and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house,
one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine.
It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature.
And the green grass strewn with a few withered leaves looks the more green and beautiful for them.
~Nathaniel Hawthorne
You, God, are my Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter. You are my one constant. All else is change. You surprise in every season, but you keep bringing them with blessed consistency. You are the architect of change that disturbs and delights--and of the consistency that comforts and centers me like nothing else.
This morning (and why not every morning?) I praise You for the consistency of change, and your great glory in all things. I love You.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Hebrews 13:8, NIV)