A Northern Perspective on Fall
Ever so slightly the earth shifts. The only evidence noticeable to us is the placement of the sun. She is no longer round above our heads taking her triumphant daily course from East to West but shyly skirting the southern sideline across the blue abyss. Her journey from start to finish is shorter than in summer months; starting later and ending sooner. She’s sending us a message, a subtle reminder that as one season of warmth, growth and play gracefully exits it’s time for a quieter, fallow season that turns us inward to attend the soul.
Her waning is a nod to God relinquishing herself and our earth to Sabbath. A Sabbath made by design, as necessary as breathing and central to our creation; paramount to our being.
So with God’s ever so gentle touch, he tilts us in orbit, a gentle nudge implying it’s time to snuggle in amongst dimmed lights and glowing fires. It is time to still our busy hands that have been worn by digging in harvest soil or rest our adventurous spirits that have been exploring the world around and slow the busyness of work and play. It is a season of attending more than tending. A season of leaning into relationships, conversation, and the interior spaces of the soul. As the days slow, so do our activities, making time for stillness, peace, quiet, of being present in this dormant season planned by God’s design because he values rest, he’s built it into our framework.
This new season we enter is one of intimate growth. It begins with thanksgiving for the harvest that we bore through all our tending, serving, and living in the fullness of summer’s sun. It offers us a moment to pause and reflect on what is good, nourishing, and life-giving.
This unique season of praise does something else. It brings to mind our unworthiness, our neediness because when faced with what is good, nourishing, and life-giving we simply don’t measure up. Praise assists in opening our eyes to see and our ears to hear the trueness of God being fully holy and that only in Him do we have our being (Acts 17:27-31). Through praise, we are confronted by a Holy Longing within. In this womb of personal awareness and perhaps restlessness, it is no wonder God then leads us onward into Advent, a season of anticipation. The Advent of old opened up time and space so we could live life with God in the flesh and mess of our humanity so that we could experience Hope in tangible ways. Still today our longing feels vacuous as our lives continue to be hard-pressed by the earth as we lay beneath her pressures. Yet God is earthy, God meets with us in the pressure, this is crucial because it is the expression of compassion and grace. It is powerful because under the weight of the world God stands beside us as he plants a seed of new life, of himself, within us that is aching to break forth in our hearts and in our world.
Out of this emergence, we begin to experience the power of the Incarnation; Christ in us. Relinquishing ourselves into this season of Sabbath, Sabbath meaning completeness or fullness, is resting in the knowledge that God lives in you. And that the patterns of this world reflect his ever so gentle love directing us to himself so we may experience wholeness found through his presence in our lives here on our earth.
Sabbath Work
When we surrender ourselves into Sabbath rest, we begin to settle and dwell with God. Like the disciples, we learn to sit with him, dine with him, converse with him, live life with him, serve with him, to know him intimately as a friend. We can think of this way of knowing God like hunkering down in our heart; our personal, hidden, and quiet meeting place with God, where he begins to nourish our soul, where we sit with our best friend and allow him to attend to our spirit as only our creator can. In this space, he’s the gardener and we are the seed resting in the depths of the soil waiting for his warmth of light and the gentleness of his rain to crack open our hardened shell so life may sprout. This Sabbath work is at the core of what it means to live an incarnate life. It is the active work of understanding the great mystery; Christ in us the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27). It is in this dormant season, where it seems little is done, that we awaken to the truth of who we were created to be, and how the Kingdom of God exists here on earth. It is in this Sabbath rest that God softens our hearts, where subtle, yet powerful transformation bursts from within and plants itself in the present.
God’s Gentle Tilting
So as you consider the seasonal changes around you, perhaps the shorter days, changing leaves, dying gardens, or cooler temperatures, think on God’s intentionality. That even the slightest tilting of our earth speaks of his beckoning us to notice him, for our hearts to be drawn into a season of stillness where we can dwell and settle in God’s tender care. It may seem like an inactive time where do ‘nothing,’ but it is exactly in embracing a season of dormancy that God will reap immeasurable growth by simply resting in stillness with him. (Isaiah 30: 15) Imagine God gently tilting you to see his face, inviting you to sit closer to his side so you may dwell intimately in Sabbath rest. Imagine that settled, calming feeling bringing you into the fullness of his glory that is our glory. (2 Thessalonians 2:14-16)
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.”
Psalm 19
It’s been an unusual year for us all. Nothing has felt like “normal.” However, as Christians, our normal never changes. Our normal is steadfast and present with us in all circumstances. Whatever feelings, situations, or concerns you’ve carried over the months, may I encourage you to sit with them before God in this season of dormancy. Let what needs to die, die so that what God desires to live may be able to flourish in the months to come. Hope is never gone when we are being made new each season. As we enter autumn, what fears do you hold, what hopes do you have, how would you like God to attend to your soul in this time?
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