Greetings!
Well, how’s that for a way to get your attention after being incognito for the last several weeks. You may all have deserted me by now. Still, my counter says a few of you are checking in periodically. Thanks for not giving up on me entirely, though I can’t say I’d blame you, never knowing when I’m going to show up again. Just the way it is these days. 🙂
Since my last post, quite a lot has happened. I spent a week vacationing in my old stompin’ grounds of Nashville before attending the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) conference. I had a great time visiting with old friends. I truly am a Northwest gal at heart and feel more at “home” here in Coeur d’Alene than I ever did in Tennessee. But that’s only geographically speaking. In terms of the friendships I left behind, I left some treasures and I miss some of those friends more than ever having just seen them! Life’s sure about tradeoffs.
No matter where I’ve lived, I love autumn. And I remember fall as especially beautiful in Tennessee. One day as I commuted to work, I started thinking about fall foliage. And road kill, too. I better explain.
During the 10 years I lived in Tennessee, I saw a lot of “roadkill”—those sorry skunks, squirrels, possums and other varmints unfortunate enough to be hit by automobiles. And there’s nothing lovely about roadkill. Those critters’ bloody carcasses lay strewn across our roads and interstates. We are alerted to an animal’s presence before we even see it from its stench. Most of us instinctively look away.
But at the same time while driving to work each day, I’d witness the leaves turning from green to shades of reds and browns and oranges. Early in the season, the leaves are just beginning to change. The trees are pretty but at the peak of their cycle, the color is breathtaking. Yet much too soon, the wind blows and the leaves fall to the ground. They fall because they are dead.
Two deaths. One so ugly you instinctively look away. The other so breathtakingly beautiful, you can’t look away (except enough to keep your eyes on the road!). Each of us are born with a sin nature. You might say the state of our hearts before Christ establishes residence is a little like roadkill. We are spiritually dead in our sins. But fall foliage is a beautiful picture of death to self by way of yielding to the Holy Spirit. It is a glorious picture of how God sees us as we die to ourselves. John the Baptist said “I must decrease so that Christ might increase.” Our death is beautiful in the sight of God.
We love to gaze upon the site of the leaves changing color. Do we say, “Look at the dead leaves, aren’t they pretty?” No. We say, “Look at the leaves changing color, aren’t they beautiful.”
Trials in our lives have a way of making our lives beautiful if we’ll allow God to work. In the book of James we read: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
When we are facing severe trials, God’s desire is that they would cause us not to rely on our strength, skill, tenacity but to trust in Him to strengthen us and see us through. When I experience this crushing, it helps me to remember that God is not capricious. If He’s allowed this difficulty; it’s not without purpose. He will decide the duration and the intensity. I’ve discovered over the years that God and I seldom draw the line in the same place when it comes to my declaration of “This is too hard, I can’t do this any more.”
I may think I can’t do it any more, whatever it is, but God knows when to pull the plug on a trial. Meanwhile, He reminds me that I’m “changing colors.” What God is doing in my life and in yours, if you are a Christian, is a beautiful sight. A heart that is becoming more like Christ’s is always a beautiful thing to behold. The pain is not pleasant but painful Hebrews 12 tells us. What follows, however, is a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Those who are physically blind sadly cannot appreciate the beauty of the fall foliage. Neither can those who are spiritually blinded by their sin. They won’t see the breaking, the crushing, the dying to self that God allows as something beautiful. They will instead see the “proof” of a God who could not possibly love us. I, for one, by God’s grace and tender mercy, have purposed in my heart to view the trials He allows in my life as He does.
Father, thank you for giving us the fall foliage as a picture of how death to self looks to You. Amen.
Good to hear from you, Gayle (even though it’s not often). The road kill/fall foliage analogy was a great analogy for our lives and the two deaths we’ve experienced.
I loved this line: “Trials in our lives have a way of making our lives beautiful if we’ll allow God to work.”
I’m still here! Unless of course I get lost somewhere out there. Which is happening quite frequently lately.