If Only We Were Squirrels, & Could Sleep These Months Away.

Mid-October in Southern Georgia, a chill has finally taken to the air. I pull my jacket tighter, and welcome it. I welcome the season of thick socks and sweaters, of ear-warming beanies and noose-tight scarves. I welcome the change.

Which is a rarity, for me--I, who, most days, am such a resistor of change in any form. I , who, at the first sign of the season's turning, would often much rather stock up my goods, bury myself in a cave's warm belly, and drift into the sweet bliss of hibernation, than wait out the months among a world made bitter and barren with cold.

But there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven*, and hibernation has never been an option. When our time to be born is exchanged for our time to die, when our time to plant is exchanged for our time to uproot, when our time to search is exchanged for our time to give up, when our time to keep is exchanged for our time to throw away--these are the seasons our eyes strain for color, but are filled instead with only winter's gray.

What we are always forgetting is--how quickly the seasons shift. How soon the pain will pass--how inevitably the frost will melt--how marvelously those colors will be born again--and how deeply we will breathe in, that new and infinite expanse.

*Ecclesiastes 3:1.