By John Warren

 

I was driving through another town the other day and noticed many of the houses were decorated for Halloween like families do for Christmas.

It was a little shocking, and there were fall decorations and banners and flags giving thanks sprinkled in.

The town was having a festival with food vendors, a car show and a zombie fun run.  The streets were crowded with people.  People were enjoying people.

When I moved from that town, they were in a deep depression.  Their major business had closed and many people either moved away or were out of work.  Recent developments and an announcement of a new company coming to town was lifting the dark cloud that had hung over the area for eight long years.

It was good to see their recovery.

Recovery is something we all wish for.

Recover our community, recover our belongings, recover my sight, Lord.

Recovery means a new beginning a new chance.  It means the ability to see things in a new light.

Recovery even sounds good to me, doesn’t it to you?

Jesus recovered people’s sight and he recovers Lazarus’s life.  But even more than that we can count on him to recover our souls.

We have a plant on our patio, I think it is a red yucca plant.  It has long spikes that shoot up from the middle of green needle-like foliage and on those spikes are little red blooms with yellow centers.  Then later, green bulbs growth will appear on the spike.  After a time those green bulbs will turn brown then black.

I broke one of the black bulbs open and it was full of little black seeds. Those seeds are just teaming with the possibility of recovery and new life.

When I moved to Atlanta, Georgia, I saw my first in your face fall.  The leaves on all the trees turned colors and as they fell they blanketed the ground in oranges, reds, and golds.  It was amazingly beautiful.

But, here in Orange, I have come to love the changing of the seasons no matter how subtle they may seem by other means such as watching the progress as the Lions Club puts the carnival together or the announcement of the Scarecrow Festival at Shangri La.

 

John Warren is Senior Pastor at First United Methodist Church, 502 North 6^th Street in Orange.