Grandma Kofink taught me how to garden. I’m grateful for being introduced to the miracle of growth.  Every spring, shoots rose from the ground and eventually blossomed. In late summer and autumn the asters bloomed, a sea of purple across the back of the garden. They flourished until the first frost of autumn ended their glory. They marked the end of the growing season.

Autumn is an odd time of year. While  mother nature is getting ready for a winter’s nap, church programs are getting under way again after the summer hiatus. Monday was not only the first day of Autumn but Rosh Hashanah,  Head of the Year, the start of the civil year in the Jewish calendar. Leviticus 23:23–25 commands that this day be observed as a day of rest and commemorated with blasts of the shofar, a ram’s horn trumpet.

The end of the growing season, the beginning of activity–isn’t it strange that autumn moves us toward the ending of something, but it’s also the beginning of something? Time doesn’t quite run in a straight line from beginning to ending. T.S. Elliot’s poem “Four Quartets” Part II: East Coker begins:  “In my beginning is my end.”  It ends:  “In my end is my beginning.” Confusing? That’s the way both time and life are.

Jesus said, “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (Revelation 22:13).” No matter where we are in life, we are in God’s time. This autumn pray with the Psalmist, “My times are in your hands (Psalms 31:15).”  

Read Ecclesiastes 3:11 and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Wayne