Having passed through the Fall Feasts, I’ve taken a moment to contemplate the fall season. The world and it’s religions always seems to turn this time of year into a time of darkness, decay and death. Take, for example, the horrid fall festival coming up at the end of this month. I suppose if you believe what your eyes see, that would seem to be true. I suppose if you have no hope outside of what your eyes see, autumn would be less than uplifting.
However - As the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time to plant and a time to reap. Spring and summer are a time of work and labor — clearing the fields and planting, tending, guarding and harvesting. The fall season is the time to start living in that harvest. A time to be filled with the fruit of the growth season. Autumn is when the workers cease from the working of the field and begin living in the bounty thereof.
Spiritually speaking, we so often fall into the rut of the fall and winter seasons allowing death and darkness to close in around us. We forget that we have an almighty God that has provided for us and sustains us – in life and in spirit. As the seasons change and we move into the cool, colorful autumn, may we recall where our source of life is. Life is not found in the sun and it’s cycles – it’s found in the Almighty.
Ecclesiastes 3:9-14
What profit has the worker from that in which he labors?
I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
I know that nothing is better for them than to rejoice, and to do good in their lives,
and also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor–it is the gift of God.
I know that whatever God does,
It shall be forever.
Nothing can be added to it,
And nothing taken from it.
God does it, that men should fear before Him.
