Category Archives: Holiday Road

Celebrating Fall

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tim-mossholder-149380

You know that autumn is in full gear when the local fall festivals start popping up: apple festivals, harvest festivals, persimmon festivals, pumpkin festivals and my own hometown favorite, the Sorghum Festival.  

What is sorghum, you ask?  Honestly, I can’t tell you.  I’d always heard it was like molasses but I never actually tried it myself.  Oh, I went to the festival, ate popcorn, hung out with my friends, checked out the booths and took advantage of all the festival festivities except for one.  The sorghum.  The one thing the festival was actually about.  

For many years I treated God the same way.  After all, there’s so much to celebrate and enjoy in this world He’s created for us.  That’s why I love the holidays and the change of seasons.  They’re great excuses to make memories with our family and friends.  

However, celebrating life without the celebrating the God who gave it to us kind of misses the point.  It’s like going to Sorghum Festival every year but never trying the sorghum.  

That’s why I wrote my new book Tales from the Leaf Pile.  It’s collection of autumn-themed devotions featuring stories about the comforts of fall and how they can point us back to the God who gave us the season to enjoy.  

If you’re looking for some autumn inspiration, check out a sample of Tales from the Leaf Pile now available in paperback and ebook on Amazon Kindle and Barnes and Noble Nook.  

 

Leaf Collection

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Autumn Leaves

I had two major problems helping my daughter put together her fall leaf collection for school.  First, we only have three trees in our yard.  Second, those are about the only trees I can identify, and that’s because I planted them.   

The way I figured it, she either needed a smarter dad or we needed to get some help.  We didn’t have time for the first option, so we had to get creative.

Fortunately we have a fantastic park in our town with a wide variety of trees, and they are all labeled with tiny signs.  I have a suspicion the trees were planted to help kids like mine get a good grade on their leaf assignments no matter who their parents might be.

Labels are a fantastic resource.  They can help you make sense out of things you don’t understand.  Hmm, what is that tree with gigantic leaves?  It’s huge!  Oh, it’s a Bigleaf Magnolia.    

They can also help you differentiate between two things are similar.  Hey, is that a Sugar Maple?  Nope, it’s a Red Maple.  They kind of look alike.  

And labels make it easy to identify an object without having to carefully examine it each time.  How many lobes does that thing have?  Do the veins go all the way to the edge?  Who cares? Just read the sign!

It’s no wonder as humans we love to categorize and label things.  It just makes life simpler.  This is great when it comes to helping your kid with a fall leaf collection.  Not so great when we try to apply the same principle to people. Continue reading →