I don’t mean to be a whiner or anything, but it is my humble opinion that I was straight up ROBBED last fall.  I agreed to have my shoulder sliced and diced and put back together, and AUF WIEDERSEHEN FALL!  Just like that, the greatest season of all seasons vanished in a haze of pills and appointments.

Then there was another surgery.  A move.  Leaving my job.  New schools, attachment issues, counseling, sickness, death.  Crazytown, y’all.  Crazy.  Town.

Here’s the thing though.

This year, I’ve been reading through the Bible in a pretty methodical way.  This isn’t the method I’ve historically used to go through scripture, nor does it make me holier than thou.  In fact, if I’m being honest, it has sometimes felt far more laborious than how I’ve done the whole Bible-study-thing in the past.  But I keep chugging along.  Partly because I’m Type A and that’s how we do things.  We’re chuggers.

But mostly it’s because I’ve been completely taken by this thread that weaves through the pages of God’s Word.  This thread that I’ve always known to be there but now, after methodically reading page after sequential page, I have seen in technicolor: God always is, and He never changes.  He’s wholly good and wholly just.  Full of grace and full of truth.  All-powerful, all- knowing, and all-loving.  Over and over and over again.  From Genesis to Revelation and from birth to death.  God has been and was and will be forever and always.

Man, this gives me hope.  Coming out of a season of change and hard and “I just can’t”s, this is exactly what my soul has needed to hear.  That, even when life gets CRAY, He is.

And when life feels easy?  When we, requisite pumpkin spice latte in hand, gasp at the beauty and glory of fall?  When things make sense and things feel right, He still is.

God’s character is not contingent on our belief.  His glory does not depend on the praise we offer Him.  His goodness doesn’t falter when we, His beloved creation, screw up again and again.

This fall, we’ve seen dark days and we’ve seen beauty.  There’s been tons of laughter, and there have been stomping feet and shaking fists.  We’ve known bitter one day and sweet the next.  I’ve come to realize that this is just how life goes.  I’m learning that, when Paul (in Romans 11:36) said, “from him and through him and to him are all things,” he wasn’t just talking about the good things, nor was he referring only to the pumpkin spice latte days and Instagram-worthy moments.  Negative.

ALL things are from him.  ALL things are through him.  ALL things are to him.  And all of it, every last beautiful and messy moment, points to His glory.  Whether or not we’re feeling it or seeing it or talking about it, it’s there.  His glory.

(For the record, I’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte day.  Because I’ve never had a pumpkin spice latte.  I don’t even know what this says about me.)

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