“Three dimensional color,” that’s the way my wife described the wooded scene behind our house right now.

Deeper into the woods there still abides some stalwart deciduous trees that refuse to surrender their chlorophyll. They have neither changed colors nor dropped their leaves. Their stubbornness is usually good into December.

A few feet closer to the house are a couple of trees whose leaves scream out a description of the color “yellow.” They are brilliant and are trying to remain that way as long as possible.

Closer yet to the house are the syncopated reddish-brown leaves of a couple of trees that play peek-a-boo with the rest of autumn’s foliage.

As I traveled to our church property today, a strong rain and wind combination had helped to denude many of the trees on the horizon and along the hillside. The uppermost branches and those branches furthest out from the trunk of each tree held on tenaciously to their leaves of a variety of color as if they were holding up a final gaping umbrella against the inevitable on-coming cold weather.

Autumn brings with it transition. Deep greens change, ultimately, to browns, even darker colors of tree trunks and branches. Flora of an infinite number bows before the anticipated howling cold winds occasionally sprinkled with frozen precipitation. Their surrender prepares the rest of us for the bleak days and long nights of winter.

Yet I take comfort in this season of transition. It is comforting to know that my Heavenly Father is orchestrating all of this. It is comforting to know that at the end of a long day, there is a warm house and a loving wife awaiting me. There is comfort in putting on my favorite “sweats” and reclining in my favorite chair. There is comfort in reading a great book by a bristling fireplace. There is comfort in knowing that my Heavenly Father is just as much present and merciful in bleak days as He is in the warm ones of summer. In fact He’s responsible for this transition: Then God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years…

Pastor Megilligan