Autumn is nearly upon us and the school holidays are almost over. Teachers will be returning for training days shortly followed by pupils. Students will be returning or heading off to university for the same time.
For some, the sense that the nights are drawing in and the loss of day light will hit particularly hard. There may also be emotional milestones to get through. This hit me hard the other day, I was reflecting that about this time last year we headed up to my sister’s silver wedding anniversary and stopped in Bradford overnight so we could take mum and dad over. We didn’t know that the next time we saw mum it would be in hospital and we would be saying goodbye. Earlier this week we were in Kent as it would have been Sarah’s dad’s birthday. So, this autumn and winter means that there will be a lot of memories coming up. There will be festivals, birthdays and anniversaries without them here and there’ll be the actual anniversaries of their deaths.
Then this morning, we sung the old hymn “Amazing Grace” and the last three verses struck m afresh:
The Lord has promised good to me,
His Word my hope secures;
He will my Shield and Portion be,
As long as life endures.
Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess, within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.
The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;
But God, who called me here below,
Will be forever mine.
First, we were reminded that God is good, he has promised to do good to us and he keeps his promises. Secondly, we were reminded that our mortal life is frail and fleeting. At some point, each one of us must face death. More than that, a day is coming when this present creation will pass away. Not only is life on earth temporary but so too is this world. Christ will return and all things will be made new. We will be with him forever.
The good that God has promised us I found specifically in that hope not in comfort, success and things going well now. James 1:9-10 says:
9 Let the brother of humble circumstances boast in his exaltation, 10 but let the rich boast in his humiliation because he will pass away like a flower of the field.
James point is that we are not to evaluate ourselves by the situation and circumstances we find ourselves in now. Rather, we are to “boast” about that future day. It will be a day when everything we have in this life will be stripped away from us and we will be left with nothing of earthly value but if we belong to Christ, then it will be the day of exaltation when we are raised up with Christ for ever.
Back in the pandemic, during the first lockdown I wrote that “Summer is Coming.” My point was that in the dark days of lockdown, we could look forward in hope, not just to the summer months and the hope of escape out of lockdown but to the eternal end of winter, the summer when will be with Christ for ever.
CS Lewis put it like this in The Last Battle:
“The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning.”
I suspect for most of us, there’s some time to go before we hear words like that but one day we will. Summer is coming.
Faithroots 