Thursday, September 01, 2022

It's A Magical World

 

Good morning, and welcome.

 In the event you didn’t already know, this is the first day of autumn.  You are correct.  Today is NOT September 22, which the calendar reveals as the first day.  Today is September 1, the first day of meteorological autumn.  Meteorologists have a little different take on the seasons than the calendar.  Autumn for them begins on September 1 and goes through November 30.  Winter is December 1 through February 28.  And so on with Spring and Summer.

It is usually during about this time of the year that even if the days remain hot, the nights become cooler.  And the days themselves don’t usually become as hot as in mid summer.  This time also usually heralds an increase in what we might term the autumn rains as cold air masses clash with warm air masses in the middle part of the country, providing the proper conditions for rain, and even some stronger storms.

September also normally brings a maturing of the outdoor plant life.  Plants often seed themselves during this time.  Some begin to die back.  Others change color.  Plants that like cooler weather will grow better during this time.

And it’s also a time for animals to change their behavior.  Squirrels and others rush to store up food for the winter months.  Summer bird species begin their migration to warmer climates.  Some animals find mates and propagate their kind during this time.  Crickets and spiders look for warm places to make their homes.  It’s a busy time for all of nature, getting ready for the cold winter, ice and snow to come.

I don’t know if you look for these kinds of things in nature or not.  Such things may not interest you, and that’s OK.  However, I’ve always been interested in observing the changes in nature and the environment as we pass from one season to another.  Part of that interest is the fascination I have in wondering just how these animals and plants know what to do and when to do it to prepare for the upcoming changes.  Yes, it is programmed into them in some way, but where did that programming come from?  And how did it happen that they were able to make these adjustments in the first place?

Yes, I know all about the creation/evolution thing, and the conflicts and arguments that arise from both camps regarding why things are the way they are.  And it’s not my intention to get into that today.  Regardless of how God chose to do things, I earnestly believe that it was (and still is) a God thing and not a random act of random molecules coming together in certain random ways that just happened to produce all that we see and experience.  And one of the big things I look at when I think about this, besides what I know from Biblical literature, is the process of metamorphosis.  Without going into detail, I will just say that metamorphosis is a truly mind-blowing and incredibly complex process that screams out for a higher power to have created and sustained it, however that creation and sustenance might have actually happened.

The other mind-boggling thing is found in the Bible in the book of Hebrews where the writer says that Jesus Christ “is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.”  That phrase “all things” is synonymous with the word “universe.”  Somehow, even now, everything we see and know, and all that we can’t see and don’t know is being upheld and made operational by the power of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know if you are a faithful Christian, nominal Christian, agnostic, spiritualist, atheist, or some other religious persuasion.  What I do know is what I see and perceive in life and living.  And I’m finding that Christianity has answers that nothing else has, for questions that come from the souls of men and women everywhere in all times, all societies, all situations.

The world we see…the universe we see…is just one thing that points to the God of Heaven and earth.

May God bless you as you too continue down the path of life into what some call meteorological autumn.  Keep your eyes, ears, heart and mind open as you observe all that surrounds you.  As Calvin said to Hobbes some years ago in the final strip of the long-running comic “Calvin and Hobbes,” “It’s a magical world, Hobbes old buddy.  Let’s go exploring !”

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