PHOTO SNAPPED YESTERDAY ON OUR LATEST SHORT ROAD TRIP TO WISCONSIN

For a few months now, we’ve been taking to the road for short road trips into the countryside. We spent our honeymoon driving through the fall colors 59 years ago. These ventures are fulfilling our love of nature and especially focusing on our time together. Each trip is like adding to the time capsule of our lives together. We come to the top of a hill thinking the view can’t get any better. Then reaching the top, we’re amazed to be treated to an even grander panorama right before our eyes. This is the time of year when life abounds in the Midwest. Fields are wide open or finally being harvested. A trail of smoke follows the combine as wheat is garnered. A lone llama protects a flock of goats. A herd of Holsteins nibbles on a freshly laid bale of hay. Sheep are herded by a lively dog. Beautiful barns are filled with the bounty of summer. We love where we live. The change of seasons is a blessing to behold, although the thought of the chill of winter is in the air, and life is soon sapped. Still a beautiful luster will fill the landscape and life will go on.

Like the seasons, our lives go through times of change. We’re getting closer to the end of ours and have decided that we won’t let these last few years, months or days get away from us. There are moments when we can’t wait to get in the car and go and other times when our bodies tell us to lay low for a while. We’re trying to take advantage of those good days. As we travel – sometimes no more than a few miles – we laugh, we joke, we talk, we remember, we count each second as a blessing from God. Our days are numbered. We know that’s true, but as human beings, we hang on to this life, because we wonder what lies ahead. God knows we have fears and doubts, but He has revealed what comes after death. He has even prepared a special place for each of us who trust in His love for us.

This world is just a temporary place for us to be. Even though it is filled with wars and rumors of wars – evil treatment of human life – inhumanity towards our fellow man – darkness all around us – He has provided us with beauty in nature, wonderful friends, grace abundant and a future with Him.

“For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.” Ecclesiastes 3:3-8