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.

And so, the Summer of 2010 is over.  Oh, I know it really doesn’t happen officially until September 21^st, but we all know that Labor Day marks the end of the summer mindset.  I wrote back in June about being at the beginning of the summer and wondering what it would hold.  And here we are in September. 

September! 

I wonder why God created seasons.  While some of us live in parts of the country that aren’t about to break into beautiful Fall colors and exhilarating temperature changes (sigh), we’ll start to see some things change.  (Hopefully!  It was the hottest summer EVER recorded in South Florida.)  God could have created a world where everything was the same all the time.  But He didn’t.  He made seasons.  And I think Thomas Chisholm nailed it when he penned the words to the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness”.

God gave us seasons so that we could see His faithfulness in all circumstances – in the laid-back vacation minded days of Summer, in the back-to-school and back-to-routine days of Fall, in the bleak and gray days of Winter and in the optimistic new birth days of Spring. We see His faithfulness on hot, sunny, bright days and dark, cloudy, stormy days as well.

And so, with confidence we may indeed join with all nature in manifold witness, to His great faithfulness, mercy and love – in every season of our lives.

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven.  Ecclesiastes 3:1

These all wait for You, That You may give them their food in due season.               Psalm 104:27

And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.  Galatians 6:9

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.  2 Corinthians 5:17