CROSSROADS October 2026 NEWSLETTER

From Pastors Desk:

When the Leaves Let Go
A few thoughts as the season turns…..

Friends,

I’ve been watching the trees change this week. One day they’re still mostly green, and the next a whole hillside has gone gold. I’ve always liked this time of year. There’s something honest about it. The days get shorter, the garden starts to give out, and nobody has to pretend summer is going to last forever.

Scripture talks that way too. After the flood, God promised that as long as the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter would not stop (Genesis 8:22). The seasons keep coming because He keeps His word. That steadies me more than the colors do.

Ecclesiastes says there is a time for everything under heaven—a time to plant and a time to pull up what was planted, a time to keep and a time to let go. Fall just makes that easier to see. We aren’t in charge of the calendar. We receive the year as it comes. And the God who set the seasons in place is the same God who has us in His care.

Jesus used this kind of picture when He talked about His own death. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). What looks like an ending can be a beginning in His hands. The cross looked like loss. It turned out to be a planting.

I’ve been thinking about that for some of you who have been waiting a long time. Paul told the Galatians not to grow weary of doing good, “for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). A lot of the good work in a church never makes the announcements—praying for a child, staying with a hard situation, showing up when it would be easier not to. The Lord of the harvest isn’t late. He isn’t rushed by our worry either.

Paul also says God is the one who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food, and that He will multiply what is sown (2 Corinthians 9:10). We don’t have to force the fruit. Psalm 1 talks about a person like a tree planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in season. The leaf stays green because of the stream, not because the branch is trying harder. Stay close to the Word. Keep praying. Keep showing up with one another. That’s the stream.

Isaiah puts it simply: “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8). The trees will be bare soon enough. God will not have changed. James says every good gift comes from the Father of lights, “with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17). And Jeremiah, in a hard season of his own, could still say the Lord’s mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). The weather shifts. His kindness doesn’t.

So here’s what I’ve been turning over for us this fall. Give thanks while you can still name the gifts—a meal, work to do, people to sit beside, the good news that still holds. Let go of what you’ve been gripping too tightly: an old hurt, a fear that hasn’t helped, the idea that nothing should ever change. And keep doing the quiet good in front of you. Check on someone who lives alone. Sit with the kids. Share what you have. Talk about Jesus in ordinary conversations.

If you get a walk this month, notice the trees. They change without making a speech about it. They just do what they were made to do. I hope we can be a little like that—planted, patient, and sure of the One who went into the ground for us and rose again.

The year is turning. He isn’t.
Grace and peace,

Pastor Dave