It’s almost time. The leaves are starting to have a faint yellow tinge to their once radiantly emerald leaves, college football is finally starting back up, the afternoons are still hot but the mornings are starting to have a comfortable chill with a crispness to the air. Fall is almost here. If you’re like me, fall is the best part of every year. Cinnamon flavored everything, bonfires, corn mazes, sweatshirts, and flannels. (If you're like me, maybe a Harry Potter marathon as well, if you too like to live on the edge and risk gossip from the most conservative of your church friends.) The last few years however, I’ve realized that if I’m not careful, I can find myself rushing the arrival of fall so much that I miss out on the last beautiful breaths of summer. Don’t we all do that from time to time? 

How often do we miss the beauty of the season we’re in, because we’re so eagerly rushing to the next?

Our society is extremely accomplishment based, like avid gamers, we find ourselves achievement hunting before we even know what happened. We check off beautiful moments as if they’re mere boxes on a to-do list. “Okay, I got to college, now it’s time to graduate! I graduated college, now to get a career. I got a job, now it’s time to move up the ladder.” or maybe sometimes it sounds more like “Okay I finally got a boyfriend, now it’s time to get engaged! We’re engaged! Now it’s time to get married. We’re married, now it’s time for kids! We had our first kid, time for the second.” We spend so much time rushing towards the next season, and we only ever stop for brief pauses on holidays and special occasions to stop and enjoy where we are. But what if we were meant to live everything just a little bit more slowly? The Bible urges us on multiple occasions to be present where we are, and enjoy the season we’re in.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.” - Matthew 6:34

"Enjoy every day of your short life. God has given you this short life on earth—and it is all you have. So enjoy the work you have to do in this life.” - Ecclesiastes 9:9-12

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is." - Psams 39:4

I know there is something you’re looking forward to, and that's amazing, goals are a beautiful thing. However, as we set our goals and look forward, my hope would be that we would not let the excitement for the future breed resentment in the present. Ecclesiastes 3:11 promises that He has made everything beautiful in its time. I know so many young adults eagerly awaiting marriage, and marriage is a beautiful thing but once you’re married that is it; You’ll (ideally) never be single again and never enjoy the beauty and benefits of being single. There may be career goals you can’t wait to achieve and that is wonderful, but maybe there are people in this season that you may not be able to reach or spend as much time with when you reach that place. I know some of us are in unbearably difficult seasons and I would never ask someone to pretend everything is okay or ignore the discomfort of an unimaginably awful time. But when we can, I hope we can find the beauty in where we are. The older I get, the more I’m finding that the beauty is always there if we look hard enough. As a certain fictional wizard once said, “Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.” As for me, I’ll keep my flannels in the closet a bit longer, save the pumpkin spice for another day, and enjoy these last moments of Summer, because I’m not missing one more moment waiting for the fall. 

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