Autumn is finally upon us. And I am glad to be back from vacation so I can enjoy the cooler temperatures and the fall colors bustin’ out all over the place. I love the changing of season from summer to fall. There’s a lot of work to get done cleaning up the gardens and the yards…making sure all those summer projects get zipped up before the snow flies…OK, just a bit early to think about the cold and snow. Tell ya what…let’s just enjoy this time.
It’s a time of celebration of the harvest. It’s time to sit back and ask ourselves if we have done all we can, if we have finished everything up, and if we are prepared for the long winter ahead. As we prepare, we should also ask if we have blessed all we need to bless. Have we blessed one another here in this congregation? Are there more ways we need to work at doing that? Have we blessed our neighbor as ourselves? …because that IS what we are charged to do… “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:39).
This fall we will hear several Matthean parables that speak loudly and bluntly to our more negative human tendencies (our sin): we do not forgive as widely or deeply as the Lord’s Prayer calls us to, we are less than generous with our own forgiveness and judge God to be a little more abounding in steadfast love than strictly necessary…and how about God’s sense of fairness? These parables expose our frequent rejection of God’s invitations and our inclination to be less than loving to our neighbor no matter the consequences. But if we listen to the ways they accuse us, the accusation can become a blessing. After all, we can’t work on changing what we don’t see as wrong.
Autumn is a season of blessings, of endings and beginnings. As we move into this new season, Christ gifts us with more grace and forgiveness than we deserve and more compassion and mercy than we ever would think possible.
Blessings in your journey,
Pastor Patti