Have you noticed that the weather is starting to change? I feel it most in the mornings when I’m leaving for work. Summer isn’t completely gone because the days are still getting quite warm, but in the mornings there’s a crispness in the air that’s energizing.
The changing of the seasons is a special, almost magical time. I love it! When our kids were younger the passing of the summer season meant that a new school year was starting, it was football season and fun fall activities were right around the corner.
Gen. 8:22 says, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter and day and night shall not cease.” This powerful scripture tucked away in Genesis reminds us that, despite what we hear from prominent, cultural voices, God really is the Creator, and He is still in control of things—including the weather. As long as there is an earth orbiting the sun, it’s promised that there will be seasons.
If your garden is anything like ours, the fall crops have been planted, and we are cleaning, repairing and preparing for winter. A few summer crops are still standing, and we are doing our best to keep the water going. It’s time to assess our compost and mulch needs and decide how we are going to overwinter our perennial crops. Best of all, it’s pre-order time for the 2024 Baker’s Creek Whole Seed Catalog!
Gardening is a wonderful hobby, but it can also be a lot of hard work. Our culture has made it so easy to grocery shop that most people have moved away from growing food on a scale that is required to feed themselves throughout the year. Food preservation skills are considered a “lost art,” and unless you are very intentional about both gardening and preserving, you end up purchasing most everything you eat.
For large-scale gardeners, homesteaders and do-it-yourselfers, the task of producing enough to feed yourself is a seasonal one, and there are times when you feel that you are the only one doing it. As you enter this new, fall gardening season, let me encourage you. You are not the only one working! Even though you may not see it at first, there are living creatures all around you, and all of them are working.
One of Satan’s strategies is to make us feel like we are siloed, that we are all alone, that no one understands and that we are living out this life in solitude. Nothing could be further from the truth! You are never alone. Matt. 28:20 tells us, “and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
The soil is teaming with life! Insects everywhere are diligently toiling. They are little, but they are working. Pollinators are pollinating. Fish, animals, other people and ultimately God are all working.
Sure, there’s an ebb and flow. Some days are busier than others. There have been days that I’ve had to look really hard to even see a bird or a cricket, and I’ve decided that I don’t like those days. They’re eerily creepy. We’re so used to the rhythm of constant activity and life around us that most of the time we rarely notice it. But when it’s absent, the lack of motion is uncomfortable, and the silence is deafening.
The globe never stops turning; other creatures don’t stop working, and God never takes a day off. Ps. 121:4 tells us, “Behold, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” He knows our needs and is working to bring good things into our lives, even when we can’t see or feel Him.
“For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus” (Phil. 1:6). God loves you and has made a way through His Son’s death on the cross to be in fellowship with you.
We are living in some uncertain days, so keep your hand steady to the plow and moving forward. When the days come that you need to rest, be still and trust the other workers.
As I tell our grandchildren, “Look up, look down, look all around.” No matter where you look, someone or something is always working.
“But Jesus replied, ‘My Father is always working, and so am I’” (John 5:17).