Fall-ing...

September 22nd.  That is the first day of fall for 2012.  Now, I live in Arizona - for those of you who do not know - we do not have four seasons as depicted on most calendars and cards.  I grew up here, so thinking about fall the way the rest of the country does - was strange for me.  However, once you live there - in that world - where leaves turn amazing colors and fall to the ground...you will never be the same.

So, here I am back in Arizona.  Changes in my live over the past 5 years have brought me out of the cold corporate culture of ladder climbing and social pursuit - and into the amazement of what is God's world.

I could so easily spend hours upon hours, days upon days, regretting everything I let slip away - the years of focus that was misspent. The moments I will never get back, because they are gone.  The things my religion of Work robbed me of - and I willfully and with enthusiasm let it.

If I do that though, I lose more.  At some point you need to acknowledge the things you have done wrong, ask forgiveness from those you hurt along the way, and then make that step over the boundary of your comfort zone to live different.  You have to make the choice to not spend one more day wasting your precious life on regretting the past or not trying each and every day to live your life to your fullest potential.

This point was brought to the forefront this morning when I got to work and I received the news that someone in our congregation had passed away in an accident last night.  I was not close to this person, I knew them and their family - however - that moment of realization again - of how each moment of our life may be our last.  He went out to run an errand, and was struck by a reckless driver.  He never came home.  His family, wife, children...  In a literal instant...everyone's reality was altered.

My deepest prayers go out to this family, as does the prayers of so many. 

No moment should go by without thought.  No time should be ignored.  No petty thing should take our focus off of the amazing gift of life we have been given.

This month, as we close out this season and prepare to enter another one.  I will allow myself to fall in love with it.  I will allow myself to look around my world and appreciate the oh so subtle way our surroundings will make a quiet transformation from one season to another. 

Hold on to the ones that I love.  Find ways to spend precious moments with them.  Special ways to make memories that will last long before this season of my life has passed.