...delivered by Lloyd Newell
As our calendars turn to Autumn, nature's grand finale of seasons dresses up around us. On many mountainsides and hills, the robes of summer's green have given way to quilts of red, orange, yellow, and amber. Overhead, autumn shines down on everyone as the harvest moon fills the sky with it's singular brilliance. Soon winter will come, and with it shorter days, frosty mornings, trees stripped of their foliage, quiet skies, and rest for the farmers' fields -- for a season.
What does fall bring to our lives after so many sun-drenched days? A backdrop of rich new colors; fallen leaves that pile up on lawns and crunch underfoot; a new schoolyear for students; festivals, fairs, and football games; patches of pumpkins and hay stacked in the barn.
We see evidence of the law of the harvest all around us: "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." It has been so since the beginning of time. We must plant a seed to watch the sprouting, nurture the growth, then face the scorcing sun, wind, floods, and droughts before we gather in the harvest. Then, only then, do we reap autumn's glory.
Like the farmers' fields, our souls must be tended and nourished, time and again. While hardship and happiness, light and darkness, pain and promise circle around us, we can sow a hearty temperament, cultivate sheer resilience, and find time at the end or beginning of the day to tend the furrows of our souls. And like the harvest we gathered from the dappled countryside, we will keep a bounty of faith, discipline, virtue, industry, and goodwill.
In ancient days, The land was good and that "glorious bloom" surrounds us still with promise of an even greater harvest. We sing "hosanna to such days to come"-- days of renewal, hope, and plenty for both the soil and the soul, when we will reap the blessings of what we sow.
