The Long of it:

A chilly fall day can be like a screeching horn, blasting an omen for gray days, winter storms, and pesky head colds. 

Or it can be that proverbial “moment in time” Whitney Houston so enchantingly sings about. 

Sometimes we place the joy of autumn on mute. Or, at the least, on hold until we can get the woodshed, or she-shed, stocked.

“It’s so fleeting,” we say. “Gotta hurry,” we say. (By the way, while I don’t dislike the term “fall,” given its other connotation (plummeting to danger), I prefer the flowing sound of “autumn.”

So, as with the literal autumn, sometimes we mute the splendor of the “right now,” throughout our time here on earth, with anxious anticipation, spending all our time preparing for the ice and snow of our lives when we should be relishing the mild sunshine and the cool breezes that are almost always there during any of life’s seasons, if we seek with our whole hearts. 

At a time when we should be drinking in the purples and reds oranges and yellows of life’s journey that can feed our dreams, we allow our minds to grip the grays of January and February—places we can never fully know until we reach them.

Preparedness is always good. But autumn is not just the time to ruminate exclusively and get ready for what’s coming; it’s also time to celebrate the beauty of what’s going on right now.

The Short of it:

The moment is yours for the taking. The future is not. Might we try to live in the precious moments God has lavished upon us?