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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rev Lynne Gibson

Good morning.

‘I’m glad I live in a world where there are Octobers’. If you recognise that quotation, you may well be of a generation which grew up reading ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and its sequels. The books were among my all-time favourites, and so I was ridiculously excited when my brother and family moved across Canada to settle on Prince Edward Island, where the books were both written and set.

As a result, and quite out of character, the first time I visited the island, I went both to the Anne of Green Gables musical and on the tourist trail. The books don’t just portray the adventures of the eponymous heroine – Anne with an ‘e’ – but give us an insight into a beautiful island, where the stunning, changing colours of October inspired her.

This ‘season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’ is often the most beautiful of seasons: the low autumn sun, early morning mists and the colours, have a warmth and beauty which can ease us gently into winter.

‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven’, the writer of Ecclesiastes put it. The seasons of our lives are no less clearly defined for us by the Creator than the seasons of nature – and yet we can be slow to recognise those changes. We may celebrate our ‘summer moments’, the births, weddings, successes in our lives, and even the significance of spring with its new possibilities and hopes.

But God is with us in all of our seasons - in the mourning as well as the laughing. He is with us in the autumn season, as some of the certainties of life around us change, where the colours of life fade, and we move into a winter of grief and loss.

Lord, as you give us eyes to see the splendour of the autumn, give us the faith to know that you walk with us in every season of our lives, Amen