My soul is more deeply stirred by this season of falling leaves than it ever has been. I’m usually the one bemoaning the loss of summer. Autumn, even having its own beauty, still heralded “the dark days are coming” in my mind.

I’ve been thinking lately though, how do we all wake and breathe and walk and live and move through this wonderland without knowing? Knowing our not-aloneness seems mountain spring clear to me today, but why? I can tell you.

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It’s because, like those two little dried up brown leaves that just danced across the street in front of my car together, I too have been the recipient of friendship, of togetherness, today. Even if in our hazardous flight of becoming one with earth again, like those leaves: even if we’re “losing” and no longer green.

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Friendship, companionship, togetherness, even being the recipient of the smallest kindness: it opens our eyes to beauty, it embraces our hearts in the truest truth. What do we do when our truth is that we feel so utterly alone, even when we’re surrounded? Or maybe, we’re truly alone and not surrounded at all.

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I’ll never forget a retreat my husband enabled me to get away to. My heart was a torn up mess, I was scared by the people who claim they rule this world and their heartless, cold, lack of humanity. Yes, I was shaking like a leaf.

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Then, right in the midst of my sobbing grief I heard a song that was louder than it all. Louder, stronger, fuller, more alive, than all the people who thought they were so massive. They were small. Like ants busy busy busy all over this globe. They thought they owned the earth they walked on but, what? WHAT?!

The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it! The trees are alive with His praise! The sky, the sea all proclaim His glory, His rule. He is King and we are surrounded by His song. It is too great a thought to hold that we are the work of His hands, but it’s true.

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My spirit trembled with the greatness and swung sweetly with this amazing grace washing over me. We are not alone, as one dear friend says, we have been saved into a kingdom: a people all over the world who have a King. This is the best news, because our King is good. Don’t think I write that because I haven’t seen bad in my own life or see what is happening in our world everyday.

I write that because I’ve heard the whole throbbing earth singing His song.

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Sometimes the Spirit in us opens our ears so we can hear, and if you hear it, I say run! Run free for the joy of it.  Oftentimes however, I see it is a friend who reminds us, and not always with words. This too is a work of our Creator, we were made for connection. I could never tell you how many friends, angels (?) I’ve met in the grocery store. Never underestimate the power of a kind stranger. Please be that for someone today? Even if you yourself are stretching for it, squinting to see it, I promise it will only be more graspable, more clear if you share it with someone else.

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Grab your kids and tell them what they are: gift. Tell them where they came from: heaven. Tell them that even though this world looks frightful (and don’t we know it); we have and hold a secret, a mystery: Messiah in us, our hope, a very real help in trouble, The Giver of Life.
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Listening for and joining His song with you today,

Raynna

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