My Season

Yes, for everyone that ever wanted to know, this is my season! That is, the one that follows summer and precedes winter...AUTUMN! And with that comes all the changing colors of the leaves. Here at Fountainview, we have orchards all over the property and the leaves have slowly been changing colors from greens to yellows to oranges to pinks to reds. It is beautiful! Several students and I were in the orchards yesterday getting some last snapshots before they turn brown. Here is just a small selection of the photos... (I thought I would include some of Autumn and Autumn ;)...)











It is amazing to me that many of us think fall is one of the prettiest seasons of the year. But after the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, that first fall was a devastating experience for Adam and Eve. Mrs White comments, "As Adam witnessed the first signs of decaying nature in the falling leaf and in the drooping flowers, he mourned more deeply than men now mourn over their dead. The drooping flowers were not so deep a cause of grief, because more tender and delicate; but the tall, noble, sturdy trees to cast off their leaves, to decay, presented before him the general dissolution of beautiful nature, which God had created for the special benefit of man." {SR 55.2} How is it that today we have come to think of it as such a beautiful time of year rather than a time of mourning. I can think of two things: 1) God brings beauty out of tragedy. Though it is a reminder of sin, God tries to still cover it with his grace and bring a beauty out of it instead. 2) Though it is the beginning of a bleak, barren, harsh, and long cold winter to come, the fall colors almost give us a foretaste and glimpse of the beauty that will come to the earth during the new birth of spring when God makes all things new again.

So in our own lives: when we are on the brink of a winter experience in our lives, he shows us two things: first, that He can bring beauty where their is pain and ugliness and second, He will takes us through that experience to enjoy the rebirth on the other side where he makes all things new. May you remember that this fall.