“Just as a jar of muddy water settles and becomes clear as it is still, so do we.”

I wrote it down, so I think I got the gist of it. Basically, if you keep stirring up muddy water, it remains murky and opaque. You can’t really see through it and it remains unclear. But once you let it settle and remain still, it becomes clear.

Sometimes, we try to solve the lack of clarity in our own lives by adding more activity and involvement, hoping that more busyness will lead to insight and answers. Maybe what God is teaching you and me in that season is to be still until what is unclear settles and then circumstances become clear.

I think about those times late at night when I’m worked up over perceived relationship strife or work issues. The more I try to resolve it in my head, the more worked up I get. Usually, the only solution is to sleep on it. Typically, I will wake up the next morning with much more clarity than I had the night before.

There’s a reason God tells us to be still. When everything is stirred up, it’s hard to see God at work in the midst of confusion and chaos. Only when we let things settle and quit trying to work everything out ourselves will we finally see and hear God.

I believe that an alternate translation for be still is cease striving. Those are two sides of the same coin — if you be still, you will automatically cease striving. Of course, that means you have to create margins in your schedule and make time for stillness. If you’re a victim of the tyranny of the urgent, you will never find stillness.

“The sound of ‘gentle stillness’ after all the thunder and wind have passed will be the ultimate Word from God” (Jim Elliot).

Well, just the one. You’re welcome.

I think one of the main reasons I love fall so much is that so many of my favorite memories are tied to Autumn. I can get a whiff of an Autumnal scent in the air, and suddenly I’m 10 years old again.

This kind of weather makes me wish I could still go over to my grandmother’s house for dinner. I can smell those freshly baked rolls even now. Sometimes, I’d give just about anything to be a fly on the wall in 1982 to see my grandparents and my uncles and my cousin again.

I also have flashbacks to me wearing those plastic Halloween masks walking up and down Fox Meadows Road trick or treating for candy and the inevitable toothbrush from the one neighbor who was a dentist. Also, there was the time our next-door neighbor took us to a kind of Halloween Haunted House event at a church (the details are a bit fuzzy 40 years later).

I can also picture going to Gatlinburg back in the day before it became so touristy and commercialized. Riding in those station wagons, I probably asked “Are we there yet?” 3,998 times in the time it took to drive from Memphis to East Tennessee.

I figure Fall is a kind of slowing down of nature before the Sabbath of winter and the renewal of Spring. I could live in a world where we went perpetually from September to December back to September. I think October may be my favorite color.

Even though I can’t really go back, Fall reminds me that I’m blessed to have memories to cherish and people to miss. I had a great childhood and was loved a lot by a lot of people. My faith is a testimony to many generations of family members who prayed for me and showed me what loving Jesus looks like.

I also think Fall may be my very favorite scent.

Growing old is not the most fun. Most people would rather stay young for as long as possible (and I confess that I am one of them). But bear in mind that growing old is a privilege and not an automatic right. It’s also a gift that is not given to everyone. You and I can both list relatives and friends who left this world way too soon.

Here is a prayer from an anonymous abbess about both the joys and travails of growing old. It’s full of wisdom and honesty. May it become our prayer if God wills that we should grow old.

“Lord, thou knowest better than myself that I am growing older and will soon be old. Keep me from becoming too talkative, and especially from the unfortunate habit of thinking that I must say something on every subject and at every opportunity.

Release me from the idea that I must straighten out other peoples’ affairs. With my immense treasure of experience and wisdom, it seems a pity not to let everybody partake of it. But thou knowest, Lord, that in the end I will need a few friends.

Keep me from the recital of endless details; give me wings to get to the point.

Grant me the patience to listen to the complaints of others; help me to endure them with charity. But seal my lips on my own aches and pains — they increase with the increasing years and my inclination to recount them is also increasing.

I will not ask thee for improved memory, only for a little more humility and less self-assurance when my own memory doesn’t agree with that of others. Teach me the glorious lesson that occasionally I may be wrong.

Keep me reasonably gentle. I do not have the ambition to become a saint — it is so hard to live with some of them — but a harsh old person is one of the devil’s masterpieces.

Make me sympathetic without being sentimental, helpful but not bossy. Let me discover merits where I had not expected them, and talents in people whom I had not thought to possess any. And, Lord, give me the grace to tell them so.”