Fall Musings

I went for a hike on this beautiful fall day. While hiking, I began meditating on how the seasons represent our lives. Each season brings blessing. Fall gives beauty and vibrancy that is unparalleled in the other seasons. It also brings death. The vibrant leaves are wonderful but quickly the color fades and what is left are dead, crispy brown leaves. I thought of how this shedding of leaves is necessary for the trees. I read that trees shed leaves to conserve energy and maintain moisture. In addition, the leaves that fall to the ground act as a mulch that insulates and gives nutrients to the tree roots.  

We experience seasons in our spiritual lives. We go through sparse, desolate winters. Eventually, the earth begins to thaw, life returns to the earth. We begin to thrive again. We get comfortable with the ease of life. Eventually we realize that difficulty, trials, desolation are again on the horizon. Our richness, comfort, stability begin to reach a crescendo like the fall leaves in the height of their vibrant colors. Like the trees, it is necessary for us to "shed" as well. It is good to shed the dead things in our lives. In comfort, we accumulate sin and often do not realize the harmfulness of it. It is imperative that we too are purged from the things that if left will zap us of our life. In the difficult seasons, our sins begin to fall to the ground and the decay of self begins to nourish our eternal souls. This nourishment allows us to get through the winter and we come out on the other side, fit vessels for new growth and new life.      

“We are apt to overshoot, in days that are calm, and to think ourselves far higher, and more strong than we find we be, when the trying day is upon us... We should be overgrown with flesh, if we had not our seasonable winters. It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit, because there is no winter there. The Lord bless all seasons to his people, and help them rightly to behave themselves, under all the times that go over them.” -John Bunyan