This may not be my best fall foliage photograph (I need to get out and walk the neighborhood with my Nikon), but this image does at least get the idea across. It really is fall around here, and this part of North Carolina is beautiful despite the long late summer and the crippling drought.

This is really a “Balance of the Seasons,” “Circle of Life,” “Sacred Rhythms” kind of a post. I’m talking about the comfort found in the natural order of life… life as it was ordained by our Creator – birth, life, death, rebirth; winter, spring, summer, fall; feast, famine, plenty, drought; hope, promise, redemption, renewal.

I’m not talking about – not writing about – fatalism or inevitability, so much as assurance. Blessed assurance, the sovereignty of God, eternity, providence. This – faith – is a concept that actually eclipses ideas like our confidence that fall will always follow summer, and winter inevitably yield to spring. In other words, relying on nature as our rock and foundation is not enough!

The natural rhythms I reference are only an illustration – nothing more; they are not the thing itself. God’s promises are true beyond even if the natural order falls apart, even if life as we know it ceases to exist, even if this Earth completely fails…