Visiting up North this time of year, as Fall gives way to Winter, has lessons for the soul.  It reminds us of the seasonal nature of God’s creation, which you can lose track of in Sunny Florida.  Life is seasonal.  We live for a season and then we die, as the natural world demonstrates every year. Leaves fall, flowers wither, the ground hardens and it is dark more than light. Armenians have always been tied to the land, so we feel this rhythm of the seasons in our very bones. It is even reflected in our church calendar, where the Fall & Winter seasons coincide with the Season of the Cross, the greatest reminder of the passing nature of all people and things as well as our hope in God’s promise of new, abiding life.  Today’s reading gets right to the point of the passing nature of all things, and the promise of hope for all of us who are here today but gone tomorrow. That promise is concentrated in just four words from Jesus: “Not dead but sleeping.”