Autumn saunters in at the end of summer, and steals away minutes of sunshine until the days are truncated at both ends.

It arrives quietly and then color flares across the landscape, like a yellow blinking traffic light that signals caution, and after putting on that brief production, the light begins receding.

Fall brings relief from oppressive summer heat, and invigorates the senses, but don’t let it fool you because it’s merely transitional, and on the other side is that dormant season we call winter.  Bleak, long, cold, sluggish, winter.

I am fifty one years old, and as lifetimes go, I guess you would classify me as being at the beginning of the autumn of life.  But I don’t classify the seasons of life quite by the same set of standards that probably the majority of people do.  Many try to somehow keep their Spring and Summer seasons going as long as possible, and stretch them out somehow, in pursuit, and indeed worship, of “youth”.  I would rather keep moving forward.

I didn’t find youth all that appealing when I was there.  But at least there was some innocence and time for being carefree when I was a kid.  Young people of today for the most part, never get that luxury. They aren’t given space to remain innocent and blissfully ignorant of the crasser things of life.

The early adult years are, by nature, years of struggle for finding one’s place and purpose, traditionally that is. However, so many young adults today are prematurely cynical and bitter.  To a degree, that is not without some valid reasons.

Everything is different now.  Delusions of prosperity have given way to disillusionment.  Greed created a false sense of plenty,  naked emperors demanded praise for non-existent new clothes, people were willingly duped to believe that “nothing” is actually “something”, but then little by little, some of them started waking up.

By the autumn of life, what we call “middle age”, seems a person should have moved beyond the realm of make-believe.   There are many middle-agers (and older) these days who can’t really help their kids get their own good start in life, for having to start over themselves.  Having wasted their own youth in foolish entanglements, failed marriage, improbable business ventures,  unrealistic “dreams”, and bad risks.  By our fifties, it would stand to reason that some degree of stability ought to have been achieved.  It was true for a lot of our parents, but for us, not so much, and for our kids? Well, it isn’t looking real good, is it?

In the present world, instability rules the day.  Man has reveled in the abundance of God’s grace during this age, heedless of the heaped-up wrath accumulating against unrepentant sin.  America, often touted as a shining city on a hill, has merely been a brief shooting star, like so many nations before.  But it is not just America that is in distress this time around.  Anyone with eyes to see, recognizes this whole world is in trouble and turmoil.  They want universality, global this, and one world that?  You know something?  That’s kind of ironic if you think about it.  Celebrate Diversity, but lets all become ONE.  How does that even make sense?

While I am at the “Autumn” season of my life, the truth is, this world itself has just about finished the autumn of it’s history and is in that final waning season of winter.  I don’t subscribe to the New Age ideology that thinks this world and it’s seasons will continue cycling indefinitely.

It doesn’t really matter, if you think about it, whether this world is in it’s winter of existence, because as inhabitants, we are all going to come to that final season.  You know the old “ultimate statistic”, ten out of every ten humans ever born, will eventually die.  The only thing different about the current occupants of the earth, is that there are a relatively high ratio of them who actually have deluded themselves into believing science will achieve immortality for humans in the near future.  Certainly man is capable.  Sorry to break it to the scientific community, though, because Ecclesiastes 12 still holds true, and God who tells the oceans they may come this far, and no further, also has set a boundary which will prevent you from fulfilling every evil you have imagined.
I believe the Bible.  Not many people do anymore, what with so many other “ideologies” to choose from and all the clamor about them all being “equally valid”. No wonder Common Core math is what it is.  If everything is relative, then not even math is the reliable, immutable thing it used to be.  2 plus 2 is no longer allowed to equal 4.   That would be just wrong.  Discriminatory.  What if 5 wants to be 2 plus 2?  Who are we to “judge”?  Numbers being attributed with “feelings” is certainly not outside the realm of the current madness that has engulfed humankind.

It is so sad.  But I don’t mourn for the end of this world, because I also believe that God is going to remove the curse on this Earth, and that later He is going to create a brand  new one.  So it is not that there aren’t wonderful things to look forward to beyond today.  But only for those who have not rejected their very own Creator God.

There’s a time for looking back.  There’s a time for looking forward.  And then, there is also a time for keeping your sights fairly constrained to the present moment and your immediate surroundings.  We always have something to give, and there is always someone who needs what we have to give. The hard part is knowing when it is time to make a change in the giving.  Not less generous, but maybe a new direction.

Those who have come along for the ride, know that I do have a habit of periodically doing sort of a personal audit, and I guess I know when one is due by a vague unrest or inner “malaise” that will niggle at me like a splinter.  I may ignore it for a while, but a point always arrives  when I know something is meant to change.

I don’t like going backwards, or starting over.   That’s because I am flawed and sinful and very limited in my ability to make most things significantly better, even with a clean start. I have had some setbacks in life, like everyone else, and even though it is true in a sense, that old saying “whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger”, it is also true that even as one grows stronger in spirit, the rest of a person, brain, body, all are subject to gradual decline due to the fact we live in a fallen world. I can’t do all that I would like to do, so I have to do a little less of one thing, if I want to add something new.  Everything that this blog has had to offer is all still here, it’s just moved around a bit.  The top menu will lead you to the sixty-some other pages that I have other than the blogstream of daily stuff, plus I moved some things out of my sidebar and out of the itemized blog-roll, into the drop down menu at the top as well, for easier access and to separate them into categories.  So it is possible that if you are a follower who just joined this blog in the last year or two, and you receive posts via e-mail or a feed, or in your inbox, that there’s stuff on here you didn’t even know about.

I look forward to the life beyond this one. Because that truly is going to be a brand new beginning.  So, maybe we have a long hard winter to endure, and perhaps not.  But onward we go!  Amen?  Time doesn’t stop for us (yet), but it will stop at the command of God: “Time shall be no more!” ( Revelation 10)

Time is not what we think it is. Science would say it is an illusion, but that’s not really accurate. Time is a restriction we currently live under.  We only understand a little about time, about space, about life. Time is a product of our limited perception.  For all this world’s science, for all the experts, and for all human pride, professing themselves wise, they (many) have became fools.  That is what God has to say about those who reject Him and go in pursuit of their own alternate explanations of how we got here, what our purpose is, and where we are headed.  So we have CERN and any number of other experiments going on which seem to threaten our very existence, but in reality, our existence is in God’s hands, and so is CERN.  Man wanting to buy more time is like a dieter wanting to buy more Twinkies.  It sounds good but isn’t actually going to result in the outcome they yearn for.  Denial of the facts don’t change the facts.

The simple ones, the humble ones, the ones who may not even understand a whole lot of science (falsely so-called), are actually just about the only ones who can know the Truth.  Truth is simple.  And the simple things of the Lord confound the “wise” of this world.  And the truth is, God intended it to be so.  There are those to whom it will not be granted to understand.  The things that “science” searches so diligently to demystify, will be ours to know when we enter eternity.

Oh, I know that statement will be scoffed at and ridiculed.  Unfortunately, the scoffers will one day know it is actually correct.  But they will know it from an inescapable hell, and it will only add to their torment.

I have been a “ponderer” for most of my life, and if anything, I don’t know, maybe that is the aspect of this blog that many have found most appealing.

Who doesn’t like to have new things to ponder?  For me, the time for keeping watch will never end until  I see Him.   But it is time for me to take a step away.   My domain and upgrade renewal period has arrived, and therefore it is a good jumping off point.  As there is no telling what the site would have reverted to if I left the upgrades to simply expire, I have gone back to a simple free WordPress theme, and done a little (ok, actually two eight-hour day’s worth of) shuffling of content which I plan to leave in place, so that all the work and the resources the Lord has brought together in this blog, will remain available to everyone.  I think that the new set-up actually works well to highlight all those resources in a way they were never really as accessible previously.  Comments will be disabled after a few days, (if I don’t do that, a bunch of spam will infect the comment area) but as long as the blog itself remains up, the Contact S.T. Lloyd feature in the upper menu will still get your messages to my inbox which I always try to respond to.  And I will still sit down and write my thoughts in a post from time to time, I’m sure..  I may re-post some of the archived devotional articles that don’t have the short shelf-life that NEWS articles have.  All of the Prophecy Updates I usually post, are accessible via the “blog-roll links” that you can find at the bottom of the page on any individual post.  (That stuff doesn’t show up on the Home Page where the menu is, which makes for a neater front page).

I am so grateful to you who walked with me along this leg of my pilgrimage,  those who came to this blog and remained, were directed here by the same Providence that led me to create it, and you know we will see one another sooner or later.  I have gotten a lot of encouragement from those get in touch from time to time to say “thanks for doing what you do” or “I’ve learned so much from your posts” or “been encouraged” but I want you guys to know that you also have encouraged me just by reading and clicking and commenting, and “liking”, etc.  So, I guess that’s it for now.

Remember that it is always darkest right before the sun comes up, and there is a Son who will rise in the East at the end of this dark night. Joy comes in the morning.  Until then, keep serving, keep watching, keep occupying, and keep trusting in Him who is faithful and worthy of all praise and glory.  I love y’all.

Amen and Maranatha!

-S. T. Lloyd