(I wrote this back in the early fall, inspired by all the changes hanging in the air. )
About a month ago, I heard someone describe August as the “Sunday of summer”.
I understood. Early June is still a captive to school, then comes the avalanche of activity: weddings, reunions, tournaments, carnivals, summer camps, 4th of July and family vacations. When the flurry stops, and the first week of August comes in view, we collectively sigh with relief. The calendar is uncluttered and for a moment, there’s nothing pressing to do. It’s already been done. Now, you say to yourself, I can REST.
But two weeks in, when the “Back to School” commercials run back to back on repeat, and the only folks hanging around in this kind of heat have antennas, you begin to grow weary of ice cream and barbeques, weary of the languid pace of life. It’s the end of summer, and the end, it would seem, of all things. The flowers have wilted. The grass, browned. Carcasses of cornstalks mowed down, their remains dried and dusty like the August air without a breeze. It grows stifling.
And you feel it. A listless longing smothered. Wonder extinguished.
Yet, just a page or two down the calendar, a stirring takes place. The sky dresses in a new hue of blue. The clouds grow to fairy tale height, billowing towers of a stark and stately white. The breeze, after a long absence, returns, a decided shade or two cooler. And the leaves. As they begin their dying days, they reveal a beauty hidden in their youth. Triumphantly, they dazzle, their kaleidoscope of colors on display. With their last breath they release their hold on living, tumbling in grace to the ground.
When autumn edges in, there is no denying that there’s beauty in dying. Incrementally it comes, the stripping away of layers of life. What was green and lush and full must die to make room for what will come. Like students going back to school returning fresh with all things new: notebooks, pencils, schedules, haircuts, shoes, and dreams. A beginning anew. A clean slate.
Nature is often a picture of spiritual realities. Jesus said, “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24) By His death, Jesus gives both everlasting life and daily life. Daily, He tells me, I must take up my cross, and follow Him. (Matthew 16:24) What does this mean? He tells me that my old self, that grain of wheat, has been put to death through His death: “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)
His death doesn’t leave me dead. It leaves the old me dead. It isn’t the end of my life, it is, rather the beginning. Just as Jesus was resurrected from the grave, I have been “raised with Christ” and my old life is “hidden with Christ in God”. (Colossians 3:3) And just like that grain of wheat, hidden in the ground, there is life emerging and growing, sight unseen.
Much like the paradox of autumn, Christ followers can be encouraged that there is beauty in this dying too. Jesus lovingly pulls away the layers of who we were, to make room for who we are meant to be. It is a daily, decades long transformation. What we loved, who we thought we were, what we depended on, begins to fall away, revealing a glory that was marred by sin. He says that His mercies are new every morning. (Lamentations 3:22,23) The slate is ever clean. We begin every day anew. “…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13)
Today, may we, like the autumn leaves, release our grip on this life, and tumble in grace towards the One who makes us beautifully new.
