Autumn might be my favorite time of year. Every year about this time, my wife and I take a drive along the back roads to Lake Geneva to view the fall colors. Now, there are many trees lining Rodney Lane where we live, and the different varieties provide a great preview of the tour, but the road trip is necessary to get the full impact.

Blue is the first color, a crisp clear blue sky, not hazy as in summer, nor dark and hard as in winter. You look at a clean sky like that and you feel everything’s got to be alright.

Brown is another hopeful color. Just a mile from our house, we begin to see the farm fields. Close to home they grow cabbage and broccoli, along with soybeans and corn. Migrant workers get up early, and with their sharp knives they cut off the heads of cabbage and toss them into white shipping cartons. Elsewhere, huge combines move down the rows of soybeans, separating the grain and spewing out the ground-up vines to return them to the earth. Field after brown field produce food, a bountiful harvest.

Yellow, orange and red. These colors can take your breath away. The sugar maples rule,  some displaying all three colors at one time. We see the deep shade of the red maples, the various shades of yellow in the birch, ash and poplars. Some trees remain green for now, The oaks are stubborn, refusing to release their leaves even after the turn dark brown, waiting until spring to turn them loose. Of course the pine and spruce trees stay green, as if to remind us that life goes on, even when all the other trees are bare and sleeping.

The meadows and roadsides are alive with purple and yellow, the last hurrah before everything turns brown and tan.

A three hour drive with a lunch stop in the middle is a great way to realize that life is not just about COVID-19 or the election or the unrest in the streets. The tree and sky colors and the rich harvests tell us that there is a sovereign God, one who changes the seasons and makes the crops to grow ripe for harvest. The sun and the moon rise and set in their regular, designed paths. The critters gather and store food for winter, just as they were created to do. Take a deep breath my friends, and observe all that God has to show you, wherever you live.