A little over a week ago, I was in Atlanta, and was surprised to notice that a lot of the trees had already lost their leaves – even while many of the trees up here, further north, were still intact.

I mentioned this to someone and she said there was only one reason for that.

“It’s the drought,” she said.

We tend to forget about it, with news of fires in California or uprisings in Pakistan. But the south, like a lot of the country, is suffering through one of the worst periods of drought in recent memory. There are water restrictions in some places – and things will probably get worse before they get better. Georgia’s environmental director says the northern part of the state will run out of water, completely, in just 80 days. Some residents have started stockpiling bottled water in their basements. The governor has called for a state-wide day of prayer over the drought for this Tuesday.

A reporter from CBS News who lives in Atlanta told me it’s not something that comes up much in conversation. But people look at the landscaping around their houses and wonder what will happen when they turn on the spigot outside…and nothing comes out…and the shrubs all begin to die.

This is all happening, of course, during a time of year when one thing that crosses our minds, and marks our calendars, is loss.

We spent the first two days of this month remembering the dead, and praying for them, with the feasts of All Saints and All Souls. We will continue that throughout this month, in our Prayers of the Faithful at mass. We just turned back our clocks last week, and so we look out the windows and see the skies getting darker, and the trees getting emptier, and you feel, with every passing day, a sense of something slipping away, something gone.

Even today, Veterans Day, while we honor those who have served our country in wartime, we can’t help but think of the ones who never came home.

Everywhere, it seems, we are reminded that this is a season not for growing, but for harvesting.

I was thinking over some of this while preparing my thoughts for today and realized that it was 17 years ago this week that my father passed away. It can be a mournful time.

And that is what makes the message of today’s gospel so important. Jesus assures us of life beyond death. We will rise. “He is not God of the dead,” Jesus says, to the Sadducees “but of the living, for to him, all are alive.”

There will be a resurrection.

After winter, there will be spring.

After drought, there will be rain.

He is not God of the dead, but of the living.

The family in the first reading believed as much. The horrifying story from Maccabees tells of seven brothers and their mother being tortured and killed – but holding on to the promise of resurrection, because they know they are dying for what they believe in.

And then there’s Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians. The Thessalonians believed that the second coming was imminent – and as a result, many had decided to just stop working and bide their time. They had become lazy. Paul was reminding them that this might not be as soon as they expected.

The passage today comes from the end of his second letter to them – and assures them, and us, of what God has done, and can do. “God our Father…has loved us and given us everlasting encouragement and good hope through his grace.” And he continues: “The Lord is faithful.” He can help us endure any trial.

If there is a finality to these readings, it’s because we’re nearing the end of Ordinary Time, and are about to begin Advent, and the great season of expectation and waiting. The readings are preparing us for that. There is a sense of conclusion.

The world is getting darker and colder.

But only for a while. A star is waiting. A light will shine.

For he is not God of the dead, but of the living.

When I returned from Atlanta and went back to work, I saw that some of the streets around my office looked different.

It wasn’t just that the trees here had finally caught up with Atlanta, and were finally losing their leaves.

It was that the streets actually HAD trees.

And I realized: this is the time of year when the city goes around planting. And the city has planted some trees near my office on 57th Street – spindly twigs held up with stakes, with fresh piles of dirt around them.

There’s an old saying that every gardener is an optimist — trusting that, out of a seed and some dirt, something will grow.

I’d like to think that in this cold and dark time of year, when so much of what we do is focused on loss and death, the city isn’t planting sycamores or maples.

It’s planting possibility. It’s planting optimism. It’s taking a leap of faith.

We should all pray for the grace to take that kind of leap.

Because, something better waits for us.

And so we come forward to the altar with our hands outstretched, to receive The One who makes it possible.

Unlike the Sadducees, we believe.

We hold out our hands for the promise of resurrection.

We hold out for rebirth after loss, for rain after drought.

We hold out…for hope.

Because He is not a God of the dead, but of the living.