I remember a friend of mine who, when you asked him how he was doing, he would always reply “same old brand, pastor, same old brand.”

For my friend this was probably true because he set up his life to view it that way. I never remembered him to start anything or have an original idea or go anywhere. He just kind of existed. I always wondered what his pastor would have said at his funeral. It appeared his faith was in the same old rut. He would just sit, soak and sour in the pew. I also wondered what it would have been like to have been his pastor and tried to motivate him into useful service to God, the Church and his fellow man.

As I awoke this morning and took out the dogs, I detected a hint of fall in the air and it truly excited me. It could have been (just a little bit) that I was excited to be heading up to Fairbanks to minister to the men in the moose and bear camps in Alaska. I do know, however, that as the seasons change, I look at it as God's way of saying to us, “A new cycle of life is about to begin and you can change and begin all over again also.”

Imagine that a little tiny 1/2-inch salmon will be born in a stream in interior Alaska hundreds of miles from the ocean and immediately begin a journey that will take him hundreds of miles down to the ocean. He or she will then live for two to three years in the billions and billions of gallons of sea water hundreds of miles out to sea.

One day God says to them, “It's time” and now this six- to 70-pound salmon turns his or her head around and begins the long trip home. This salmon will go through many dangers on this trip home. They will encounter low water, fast water, rapids, eagles, bears, foxes, otter, beaver, storms, fishermen and fisher women, even snow and ice, but yet they never stray from their mission and purpose. They finally reach the very spot that they were born three to five years earlier and begin the cycle of life all over again by spawning and dying.

I believe we could learn a lot from the “cycles of life” that God set up for these wonderful creatures. He has set up a cycle of life for us through His son Jesus but many choose not to listen, or to not be involved with His “bride,” the church.

Unlike the wonderful salmon, God has given us a wonderfully dangerous thing called “free will” and this “free will” can take us to heaven or to our own destruction in a place the Bible calls Hell.

As the crisp air of fall approaches, use this new “cycle of life” to renew your faith and mission in life and ask God what he wants you to do.

Wouldn't it be a tragic thought to just be the “same old brand, pastor, same old brand.” P.S. You're getting older! Another season has passed!

[The Rev. Dr. Knox Herndon is the pastor of “His House Community Church” and a substitute school teacher in the Fayette County school system, and a former Army chaplain. The church is currently meeting in the American Legion Log Cabin across from the fountain on the Square in Fayetteville. Prayer line 770-719-2365; e-Mail Khern2365@aol.com

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