Fall

Thank You for the World Around Me

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

Outside of our window there is a massive tree. Each day in the fall we have watched the leaves change color, an orange red hue starting at the top until now where the whole tree is colored in this new hue. I love seeing this because I am watching nature at work, the leaves are preparing to fall, while the winter will have it completely bare, only to spring new leaves again. I look at that tree and see the intentionality in all of creation that God had a hand in.

When we look at the world around us, we see some amazing things. You can look at the mountains and the oceans, admire the vastness of them, or you can look at the small details like a tree outside of your window. I love this fall season because the colors of nature are so much more apparent as we look outside. November for me is a great time to reflect on all that I have been blessed with, and nature reminds me that I have an intentional God.

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Face Fear with Friends

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

I love this time of year. October brings with is the true fall colors and weather, it also happens to be the month I was born. I love this season, plus I always love the spooky movies that make the feel even better. Now, I don’t love the intense horror flicks, but I do love b-movies. The term “b-movie” is an old film term, theaters would have a-movies with the higher budgets and star power in the old nickelodeons, but the b-movies played much later. They were low budget and often were spooky in nature, but seeing the strings on a flying saucer doesn’t really make you terrified. Every October, I like to write about these cheese-fests and talk about some lessons we can all learn from how these movies tackle fear inducing situations.

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Make Good Fruit

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

“I am the vine. You are the branches. If you remain joined to me, and I to you, you will bear a lot of fruit. You can’t do anything without me…When you bear a lot of fruit, it brings glory to my Father. It shows that you are my disciples.”

John 15:5-8, NIRV

Recently, I have been on a kick of watching people renovate homes and cabins on YouTube. Not million-dollar mansions, but small little cozy spaces. What I love about these videos, is there is often a space that looks completely jacked up, and over time, you see it become something amazing. Hannah Lee Duggan’s video (shouts out to it), really made me jealous and got me thinking about life. With the start of September, my brain is already tuned into the fall. The autumn season is all about harvest, reaping what has been sown over the course of the spring and summer. Mix that idea with what I’ve been reading through in Scripture, and it has left me with one key concept:

Make good fruit.

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Harvest Season

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

Autumn and winter are some of my favorite seasons. You have the start of fall, which is only a few more days, where all that was planted can now be harvested. Then as winter comes in, it shows us the priorities and the true needs in our lives. Now, to be honest, I know nothing of farming and agriculture, so what I just said could be totally false, but the idea of harvest season is something important for all of us. Harvest simply means gathering the crops that have been planted. It happens once a year during Autumn, and I believe this simple concept is how we need to live our lives as this harvest season begins.

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Seasons

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

One of the funniest parts about living in Orlando and working for Disney, is the fact that in the parks it is now full on fall. My dear Danielle and I were chuckling at the fact that the Jack-o-Lanterns are out and the fall leaves are on display, in 90 plus degree Florida weather. I love the changing of the seasons, it always comes just at the right moment. It makes me think about life, and I feel like we all go through seasons. Some seasons are better than others, think about some of your favorite times of year. I love the crisp fall air and the general color of orange all around. There’s just something about watching a spooky cartoon and eating candy that makes me jump back to memories in my mind. We go through great moments in our lives, moments that we cherish and remember forever. Then, there are the seasons of hardship. While I don’t hate summer, I think about the time I was burned terribly during a summer camping trip with the Boy Scouts. I always shudder slightly when I prepare to go to the beach in summer, because of the pain that happened in the past.

The interesting thing that I’ve noticed about seasons, is that in both the positive and negative moments, good comes from both.

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Harvest: The Results of Sowing

/ Joshua Thomas / Leave a comment

October is here! I always love this season, as it kicks off so many good events. My birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas; it’s my favorite time. It’s a season of change, seriously, it’s the autumn season of change. I’ve been through a huge season of change. This past week I got married to my best friend in the world. It was such a beautiful moment, one that I will always remember as the beginning of a brand new chapter in our lives. I’ll write about that in a few weeks, but one thing that I want to focus on is the season of fall. When I got married to Danielle, I didn’t meet her the week before and say, “hey, we should get like married or whatever.” It was the result of a cultivation of our relationship, we chose each other and invested everything into it. Our marriage is a result of the sowing we made into our relationship. That sowing directly affects the harvest that will come, and as a conclusion of these one-word topics I have been writing on, I want to focus on the harvest.

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