Genesis 1:14-16 — And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

It’s kind of strange round here just now. The temperatures are cooler than you might think of for Southwest Florida, dead leaves are falling off the trees and today it’s even been overcast and misty … if this were anyone else I’d say it was fall! I was reminded of John Keats beautiful poem “To Autumn” … you might remember it. The first verse is:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;  

Conspiring with him how to load and bless  

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;  

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;  

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells  

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,  

And still more, later flowers for the bees,  

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

My thoughts moved, naturally I think, to the seasons and God’s providence. God created the seasons. Though the earth’s orbit and tilt and differences in latitude mean that different places experience different seasons at different times, God has made provision for seasonal variations in all the earth. “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;” (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

The seasons are just one mechanism in the wonderful engine that is God’s creation. Modern creation advocacy might make you think this is a new observation, but as long ago as 1764, Swedish philosopher and theologian wrote:

Many constant things exist, created that inconstant things may exist. Such constants are the ordained changes in the rising and setting of sun, moon, and stars; their obscurations by interpositions called eclipses; the heat and light from them; the seasons of the year, called spring, summer, autumn, and winter; the times of the day, morning, noon, evening, and night; also atmospheres, waters, and lands, viewed in themselves; the vegetative force in the plant kingdom, that and the reproductive in the animal kingdom; likewise what is constantly produced when these forces are set in action in accord with the laws of order. These and many more things existing from the creation are provided so that infinitely varying things may exist, for what varies can exist only in what is constant, fixed, and certain.

It is a glorious idea to me. God created a wonderful system of rules that interact to provide the blueprint for the infinite variety of creation … 

I seem to have come a long way from the falling leaves on a misty day. I have enjoyed the ride … we have an amazing God!