It’s mid-October and I’m nostalgically thinking of the beautiful red and gold leaves that fell from our trees in New England.  Walking through the woods, we’d shuffle through a bed of fallen leaves.  Sometimes bright red, sometimes deep colored, sometime bright yellow:  It depended on the kind of tree.  Even Nat King Cole sang about them.

“The falling leaves drift by the window
The autumn leaves of red and gold.”*

*Autumn Leaves, songwriters: Johnny Mercer, Joseph Kosma, Jacques Andre Marie Prevert.

I wondered if the Bible spoke about this beautiful season.  I found a verse in Genesis that does remind us of the seasons that God has created.  Autumn is a season of harvest; we reap what we have sown during the year.  It’s a time of abundance and thanksgiving. 

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

A well-known harvest hymn, “Come, Ye Thankful People, Come” was written by Henry Alfred and first published in 1844.

“Come, ye thankful people, come,
Raise the song of harvest home;
All is safely gathered in,
Ere the winter storms begin;
God our Maker doth provide
For our wants to be supplied;
Come to God’s own temple, come,
Raise the song of harvest home.”

So come ye thankful people.  We may sit under the green of palm trees.  Our thermometer may be far above an early frost.  The pumpkins we see may be in the supermarket rather than in the fields.  But it is autumn.   The farmer does gather in his harvest.  That harvest will provide for our wants in the months to come.  Let’s raise our songs of thanks to the God who blesses us with his unconditional love.

Judy