This morning,after I was beaten badly in tennis I looked around and realized that yesterday was the first day of fall, - a great distraction from defeat. My family loves the fall season. I think it is our favorite time of year. My wife and I were married in October twenty-two years ago. But that's not why it's our favorite season. We were married in the fall probably because even then it was our favorite season. We enjoy the outdoors and spent many hours riding horses, canoeing, and hiking when we were dating and first married at the camp where we met. Time outdoors has always been a big part of our life. And I suspect we enjoy both spring and fall because the changes around those seasons are the most dramatic and dynamic in nature. We enjoy the changing seasons in nature and talk often of enjoying the changing seasons of life. We enjoy our kids, who are teenagers now. We enjoyed them when they were toddlers and grade schoolers and tweenagers too. We often hear people say they enjoyed particular points of time in their lives and with their children better than others. But we have come to enjoy them at every age and life at every stage. Life is challenging enough with bucking the inevitable, that time marches on and seasons change. Maybe this is one reason why we are at peace and love our work at PBU so much. We cross paths with students in the changing seasons of their lives. They enter PBU having ended one season in life and begin another one, eventually graduating and leaving behind this season for yet another. And through it all we see the gracious, loving hand of God at work in their lives.
