Devotional for September 12, 2024

“Autumn Listening”
by Pastor Sharon Williams

Pastor Sharon read a devotional earlier this week that resonated with her focus on listening and discernment. Here’s an excerpt:

“Autumn is considered a time of contemplation and transformation. The changing colors of the leaves, the crisp air, and the approaching Thanksgiving holiday can inspire us to connect with the world around us. In fact, the modern writer Sister Marie Paul Curley writes that autumn can be “a time of hidden preparation for something that we cannot yet imagine.”

Perhaps, you can imagine how this challenged her to consider the ways she will be open to listening differently to the change of season not as a midwesterner, but now as resident in the desert southwest. And maybe for many of us long-time Las Vegas residents, she wondered what discoveries you might be prompted to remember about your first or early experiences of autumn in Las Vegas.

Either way, as fall approaches and you are prompted to cultivate new habits of listening and rediscover that there’s so much to be heard as autumn arrives: the call of wildlife, crunching footsteps, and the sound of the wind in the desert landscape, may we also stay present to the voice of God to which we must attune our ears.