Autumn

I love this time of year.

 

Every year I am surprised by how bright and vibrant the leaves are on the trees.  Some of them are so beautifully rich that they actually seem to be glowing.

 

I love seeing the leaves on the trees and I love watching them drift silently and slowly to the ground, like snow.  I love kicking through them on the floor and scuffing my boots through huge piles of dried, curling leaves.

 

I love how predictable the trees and plants are through the different seasons - even with our awful British weather. 

 

The Bible talks about their being different times and seasons for things in life too:

 

         "There is a time for everything,
         and a season for every activity under heaven:

         a time to be born and a time to die,
         a time to plant and a time to uproot."

 

         [Ecclesiastes 3:1-2 NIV]

 

We don't tend to think of 'death' as having a season or a purpose.  It usually signifies the end of something.  But when we look at the trees in Autumn, we see that death is part of a necessary cycle.

 

In the film 'Calendar Girls' one of the characters describes this cycle:

"Every stage of their growth has its own beauty, but the last phase is always the most glorious."

 

We don't usually think of death as being beautiful or glorious.  It is something to be mourned and grieved.  But there is a real freedom in stripping away the things in our life which are dead.  Things which have no life left in them. 

 

It may make us feel vulnerable and exposed, in the same way that trees are bare through Winter.  But without shedding that which is dead, we cannot expect and eagerly anticipate new life.