In little or no time, all the traces of the season's bright and resplendent zenith dot my lawn, rather than my trees.
The once blazing-red Burning Bush, which sometimes would make me feel like I needed to take my shoes off when I was by it, now sits empty, looking like any other bush in my garden.
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| Then. |
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| Now. |
Similar sights everywhere I look remind me of winter's imminent birth. The trees bare limbs are now are being tucked in for a long sleep. It's like they are resigned for another 5 months until life again will spring from their spindly arms. Like I mentioned, my yard is now carpeted in gold. Gold that once was green and gave me shade from the sun.
Looking around on this snuggly, overcast Fall morning I am reminded of something I pondered a few years ago on a day not too terribly different from this one.
I found the musings, kind of like prose, in my old journal and I think that today, maybe today, is as good a time as any to share.
~~~~
Suddenly it's just me. Feeling small and sitting alone in a silent mansion. It's a comforting quiet; my subtle companion as I watch the world go by through picture windows and breezes which give some movement to that horse swing made of tires right outside said window.
I am caught off guard by the calmness of the world as it progresses through time. Maybe I should clarify that it's not really the WORLD I am watching. From here I see no cars. Certainly no stores and public transit. The most commotion in this current existence is from the ceiling fan that seems to get off balance every 35 seconds and produces a faint rattling as it is righting itself.
So no.
Not the world. That's not what I am watching.
More like those still-green oak leaves and those blades of grass that have just been sprinkled by a very British-esque mist which has lingered all morning.
The sun threatens to peak out and I wish it wouldn't. The gray is giving me a nice repose.
In this silence, though. The blades of grass and the leaves and the rock wall. They seem completely unaffected by that world I can't see from here. They make me think of time going slower; I know this isn't the case, though, as time goes the same for me as it does for them. They just seem to spend their days differently. For good reason, too: their life is shorter than mine. They, the grasses and the leaves and the flowers, of anyone, know how fleeting it all is. Three months, maybe four in this climate. That's all the time they have to do what they do: Be beautiful and green and keep the mud off my feet and the sun off my back. The rock wall has seen hundreds of months come and go, and is probably worse for the wear. It, though, might know time more acutely than anyone else, for it is what it is. No new life comes to a rock wall; just a slow persistent decay.
Yet, in their short existence, I find a meaning most elusive to most things more animate, more growing, with more longevity.
With my hustle and bustle and 4 p.m. coffee I think I have decided that I am doing it all wrong. Who ever knew that lawn coverings could pack so much of a punch to my habits and decided patterns of how I live this life?
See, the thing is, if plants and flowers and grasses had thoughts, this is what they would know: They would understand decay. They would understand fleeting and time better than anyone--and I think they would understand expectation.
This leaf has only less than half a year to do what it was created to do, while knowing with everything that they are that this short time frame is NOT how it was supposed to be.
Romans 8: 19-22 says, "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time..."
All creation waits in expectation. All creation wants so badly to be redeemed from this decay it was subjected to. To forgo this limited existence of accomplishing its only purpose: To reveal glory (Romans 1: 20).
I wonder. Does every leaf hope it is going to be in the generation that gets restored? Liberated? Freed from frustration?
Do they fear their fate of swift death by a sun to unbearable or a frost too frozen?
Sure all of this sounds silly, but the pulse and expanding heart in my chest whispers that I am onto something.
This is not right and the ache making me almost short of breath knows it.
Time passing means that there is an end. A death.
A slow fade; a cut off.
And for most----a separation.A not seeing Glory.
Human beings utterly removed from an Existence they knew they never knew.
And know they should have known.
In their passing of time the lack of redemption, the wrongness, most assuredly was felt. Why else for the hustle and bustle? Is it not to cover up this knowledge that they don't know Him? Being busy doesn't leave you time to sit and watch swaying leaves and growing grasses that are expectant and hopeful. It just leaves you time to mow it.
In going against the grain, here I sit, pondering a truth that those oak leaves know better than I do.
When you are a leaf and your only purpose for existing is truth and the telling of it, you somehow see the world differently.
Rain means a prolonged life. Clouds mean shade from the withering heat.
"One more day. Give me one more day," I can hear this growing creation saying. "I want to be the one who sees His coming. I want to be the one changed, removed from my frustrations. The one finally made whole again. No end to doing the only thing I was created to do: tell of His glory."
I can almost hear them talking as I sit in this silent mansion.
And yet the funny this is: I almost feel an envy coming from them. A pity, too.
Leaves and grasses and fading flowers, created only to show glory, they see my permanence and wish they had more time like I do. Yet they see my lack of understanding that so far these 20-something odd years have not given me, and they pity me for not "getting it." They pity me for not hearing the only truth they are trying to proclaim. For not understanding their only purpose in existing:
To proclaim the coming. Proclaim His coming. Proclaim that I need to submit to the coming Glory.
Does my hard heart make them feel like they fail, I wonder?
Does their truth, this message of a coming Restoration and Righting, make no impact on my hustle-bustle-4-p-m-coffee existence?
And, if I don't understand their message, who failed? Me or them? Are they too quiet, and am I too insulated?
Or is it a mutual edification? Their proclaiming a Coming, and me seeing it and thus understanding my failure, my deep deep need for the Restoration they speak of, the Restoration they hope they are the generation to see.
Even if neither of us are witnesses to the coming they proclaim , did we both fulfill our purpose? Them proclaiming, and me understanding the gravity of all they speak?
And who, in the end, will have proclaimed Glory better? These swaying, fleeting, expectant leaves, or me finally being aware of my need to be righted and restored?
~~~
It's obscure, I know.
But have you ever thought about it? All creation waits in eager expectation. They are waiting for the big reveal, like guests in a chapel waiting for the bride to come.
And all they are created to do is say that He is coming, he will not leave his bride.
That's what the Bible says about creation.
I can only imagine, then, that all creation would want to be the generation, THE summer leaves, to see all they proclaim about come to fruition.
This November morning truth, however, is that this generation didn't make it: They proclaimed and they proclaimed and they proclaimed. Yet, in God's patience and perfect timing, they are not the ones that are going to see.
Going to see his splendored coming.
In five months, though, another generation of proclaimers will come. And they will repeat this glorious message: He IS coming. Some generation WILL see it.All things will be righted by his presence, frustration will be removed, all will be revealed, and all that will remain is that which cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:27)
Praise the Lord. And thank you, decaying creation which is sprinkled all over my lawn, for speaking of a hope I need on dreary bare-limbed mornings.
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