Pastor's Reflection 2026-08-20
"While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." Genesis 8:22
There's a particular feeling in my bones that shows up sometime in early September. It's not quite fall, we don't really get fall here, at least not the way people back east experience it. But the mornings are a little cooler, the shadows start slanting differently by 4pm, and if you're the kind of person who pays attention to grocery store endcaps, you've probably noticed the Halloween candy has been out for weeks, and the Christmas decorations are lined up backstage, ready for their big entrance. I say this every September, half-joking, half not: "Have you finished your Christmas shopping yet?" Because every year Christmas seems to show up earlier, so that joke lands a little differently than it did the year before.
In this passage from Genesis, God makes a promise to Noah; right after the great flood, right after everything that mattered had been wiped out and everyone and everything had to start over. God didn't promise Noah an easy life. God promised rhythm. Seedtime and harvest. Cold and heat. Summer and winter. Day and night. On and on, without ceasing, for as long as the earth remains.
That's a profound promise. It means that even when everything in my life feels like it's falling apart, the rhythm of the seasons will keep coming and going. The world will keep turning toward planting again, toward harvest again, toward light again. Feelings of grief or loss will change along with the seasons, too.
I think about my Issei grandparents and how many seasons they had to move through. There were many seasons that they would never have chosen: a new country, a new language, incarceration, the return to the West Coast, and the slow rebuilding of their lives from nothing. They lived Genesis 8:22 in a way, quite frankly, that I hope I never have to. And they kept planting anyway. My mother's family owned a nursery in Seattle, so after the war they had to literally plant again from scratch. My uncle once told me that they would sneak clippings from the side of the road; small cuttings taken so they could be rooted and grown into new plants. That’s how they restarted the Des Moines Way nursery in Seattle - one sprout at a time.
So as the days get shorter and the sunlight leaves us a little earlier each evening, I'm trying to be less resistant to the season changing and more trusting of the rhythm underneath it. God promised the seasons would not cease. I am asking God to help me believe that all will be okay when the seasons of my own life are changing.
Perhaps the real gift of September is not simply that it pushes us closer to the hecticness of Christmas, but that it reminds us we are gently and lovingly held inside God’s rhythm which is wiser and steadier than our own plans.
See you Sunday, and don't forget to bundle up a little, the mornings are turning colder.
With love and warmth,
Pastor John
In this passage from Genesis, God makes a promise to Noah; right after the great flood, right after everything that mattered had been wiped out and everyone and everything had to start over. God didn't promise Noah an easy life. God promised rhythm. Seedtime and harvest. Cold and heat. Summer and winter. Day and night. On and on, without ceasing, for as long as the earth remains.
That's a profound promise. It means that even when everything in my life feels like it's falling apart, the rhythm of the seasons will keep coming and going. The world will keep turning toward planting again, toward harvest again, toward light again. Feelings of grief or loss will change along with the seasons, too.
I think about my Issei grandparents and how many seasons they had to move through. There were many seasons that they would never have chosen: a new country, a new language, incarceration, the return to the West Coast, and the slow rebuilding of their lives from nothing. They lived Genesis 8:22 in a way, quite frankly, that I hope I never have to. And they kept planting anyway. My mother's family owned a nursery in Seattle, so after the war they had to literally plant again from scratch. My uncle once told me that they would sneak clippings from the side of the road; small cuttings taken so they could be rooted and grown into new plants. That’s how they restarted the Des Moines Way nursery in Seattle - one sprout at a time.
So as the days get shorter and the sunlight leaves us a little earlier each evening, I'm trying to be less resistant to the season changing and more trusting of the rhythm underneath it. God promised the seasons would not cease. I am asking God to help me believe that all will be okay when the seasons of my own life are changing.
Perhaps the real gift of September is not simply that it pushes us closer to the hecticness of Christmas, but that it reminds us we are gently and lovingly held inside God’s rhythm which is wiser and steadier than our own plans.
See you Sunday, and don't forget to bundle up a little, the mornings are turning colder.
With love and warmth,
Pastor John
Posted in Newsletter 2026-08-20