Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Today's reading titled Redeeming the Season was written by Tim Gustafson.

Lisa wanted a way to redeem the season.

So many of the autumn decorations she saw seemed to celebrate death,

sometimes in gruesome and macabre ways. Determined to counter the darkness in some small way,

Lisa began to write things she was grateful for with a permanent marker on a large pumpkin.

Sunshine was the first item. Soon Soon visitors were adding to her list.

Some entries were whimsical, doodling for instance. Others were practical, a warm house,

a working car. Still others were poignant, like the name of a departed loved one. A chain of

gratitude began to wind its way around the pumpkin.

Psalm 104 offers a litany of praise to God for things we easily overlook. God makes springs, pour water

into the ravines, saying the poet. He makes grass grow for the cattle and plants for people to cultivate.

Even the night is seen as good and fitting.

You bring darkness, it becomes night, and all the beasts of the forest prowl.

But then the sun rises.

People go out to their work, to their labor until evening.

For all these things, the psalmist concluded,

I will sing praise to my God as long as I live.

In a world that doesn't know how to deal with death,

even the smallest offering of praise to our creator

can become a shining contrast of hope.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional Scripture reading is from Psalm 104, verses 10 through 23. He makes springs pour water into the ravines.

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