Sometimes, autumn makes me homesick. Which is strange, since it is my favorite season outside of Christmas. All cozy and cuddly and gathering-in. I love the wooly worms and candy pumpkins and gorgeous leaves. I occasionally become somewhat giddy in the middle of the afternoon just thinking about going home to snuggle in front of the fake fire in the evening.

But when the air cools and the first leaves turn, I sometimes catch myself looking up from the kitchen sink expecting to see our teenagers walking in from school. I can almost hear them laughing and chatting as they step onto the big, front porch that runs the width of the house.

The thought shocks me, because we don’t live there anymore. Those teenagers are adults now, with their own children walking home from school and stepping up on porches in other cities.

Even crazier than those thoughts, though, are the moments when afternoon sunshine hits just right, and suddenly I feel like I’m the teenager coming home from school! My mom is driving, and I’m in the front seat, and I simply can’t talk fast enough to tell her everything I want to say about the day.

This is what autumn does to me. It makes me want to get everyone I love together in a room (or, preferably on a porch) and just talk to our hearts’ content. No distance or time or trouble between us.

I think this happens to me because autumn reminds me of the great Gathering-In at the end of the age. All the saints who have ever lived will gather with Jesus for the great wedding feast of the Lamb on that day. Everyone will be there. The Apostle Paul and my Grandpa Adair. The great women of faith from the Bible and sweet Ellery Blythe who only lived nine hours in earth time.

We will all sit down together as the Church Redeemed, and we will talk and sing and celebrate and hug and talk some more. And no one will ever, ever, ever have to leave. We will be together with one another and with God our Father forever. (I expect my grandmother will make the fried chicken.)

And that, Dear Reader, is the real reason I get a little homesick each Autumn. It’s because I’m so looking forward to getting Home.

In the meantime, we snuggle.