Our Father in Heaven,

We thank you for the crisp cool fall mornings and evenings that we are experiencing now. It makes us aware of the cold winter weather that will soon be upon us. Before that however, we get to enjoy a colorful fall season, with joyful fall festivals, cider, pumpkins, raking leaves, and everything else that goes with this wonderful season. And we don’t forget to notice the beauty of the changing sunlight and lengthening shadows.

It seems like just last week that I saw the first signs of the green corn and soybean plants breaking through the fields of rich Illinois soil. But it’s actually been much longer than that. Some of the fields have already been harvested, and those that remain are brown, and will soon be harvested and laid bare until next spring.

The leaves on the trees that I see on my afternoon walks are changing from green to red, orange and yellow each day. The burning bushes, and the red sunset maple in our back yard, planted in my mom’s memory more than twenty-five years ago, will soon be a spectacular show of red.

Father, you are so faithful. Each day the sun comes up in the morning, and sets in the evening. Throughout the year we get to experience the seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. The great hymn by Thomas Chisholm tells us:

Summer and winter, and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness
To Thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.

We thank you for your faithfulness, your wonderful creation and for this fall season. We thank you for the new morning mercies you provide us:

Great is Thy faithfulness! Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

In Jesus’ precious name I pray,
Amen