The Death of Leaves

Greetings Dear Reader,

I found my yard and driveway littered with death.  It is golden, red, and brown.  It is death driven by the wind and scatters all over my world.  They seem to chase each other along the path the wind directs.  The leaves collect in corners and nature groups around puddles and tree trunks. 

The colours are amazing.  The sugar maples blaze in harmony with the sumac.  The willow yellows and sheds its thin leaves to carpet my yard at the front of the house.  The oaks are just beginning to transform as they are long in strength and slow to change.  The pines in the back of the yard remain green ignoring the call to change that their brothers follow.

All over my world the leaves are dying.  The parent trees are drifting into winter reverie.  This part of the world will yield to the cold and rest until spring.  So all around me the leaves die. 

It is a good death this death of leaves.  They have done their duty.  They move on to a final duty.  These leaves that dance around my world spent the summer providing for me.  They have given oxygen and shade.  They have murmured to me in the wind and chattered angrily through storms.  These many leaves have spent their entire lives doing only what they were created to do.  They have actualized their purpose and benefitted me in the doing of it.  Now they will do their last duty and become soil again.

I feel gratitude for these leaves for even in death they teach me.  I wish that I obeyed all that I am to be for Christ and creation as easily.  I want to be so committed to Christ that I provide life, colour, and respite to those around me.  I want to shade others.  I want to give them air in which to breathe freely and safely.  I want who I am to enrich their lives with beauty and grace.  I want my voice and words to be a murmur that leads to truth.  In the end, I want even my death to serve Christ’s purpose for me.

So as the leaves pass on and the trees and I look toward winter I look for ways to be more like the leaves.  I continue along the path of my journey toward Christ and today it is strewn with the colours of the fallen leaves.  I am temporary just as they are and autumn cannot be too far away.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."