Shadows of the afternoon chase me down the wooden slats of my front porch. Step by step we slide together, edging inch by inch toward the waning warmth.

Two days ago, the fresh sea air had the tiniest bite in it. Not the sort of briskness that makes you want to dig all your sweaters and wool socks out of the back corner of your closet, but only a small shiver, whispering of the coming change.

Later on, the dew will turn the blades of grass to frosty splinters, and September breezes will scuffle piles of wasting leaves down lonely streets. But those days are Not Yet. Summer still lingers, even as the first red alder leaves skate down to greet me on my morning walk, already yellowing – the premonitions of fall.

Autumn is a paradox: the burgeoning beauty of annual death and decay. The effects of the curse are crimsoning maples and vermillion hillsides, and utterly lost on us.

Seasons wax and wane, but He remains.

In autumn rest the latent undertones of a redemption that is at once finished, and yet still on its way to full completion. How else can one describe the fireweed cotton floating in puffs on the wind, or the faded blues of the final forget-me-nots, or the last of the thimbleberries, if they are not the murmurs of a resurrection?

Maybe there will be different sorts of seasons in the new heavens and earth – not seasons of life and death and rebirth going round and round, but varying newnesses, emerging with the roars of the Lion of Judah.

I hope there’s something like autumn there, heralding in the chilly, fire-in-the-hearth sort of days with blazen sunsets coming in a little earlier, and cooler sunrises harkening in the crystalline skies.

Maybe autumns here are only rehearsals of the glory to come.