For many people, fall is the most anticipated season of all. Those of us who love the sights, sounds and tastes of fall are in good company. C.S. Lewis said it was the best of all seasons and I don’t know that I can disagree with C.S. Autumn, just like the other seasons, is potent with meaning. We see the changing of the guard, from riotous summer to the quiet retreat of cooler, shorter days.
There may be some however who have a bit of a struggle with autumn. Amidst the beauty and freshness that Autumn brings there is a reminder, a foreboding, that soon death will come. We will awake one day not to red, yellow, and orange hues but to dull blacks and browns, to barrenness. Nature’s starkness will mimic their mood and a temptation to descend into their own personal hibernation will come calling.
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| An Autumn Morning by Henry Herbert La Thangue |
I too have points in the year, usually in late summer and late winter, when it feels as if change will never come, that I will be forever stuck in intense heat or cold. I am watching and waiting for relief from heat and drought or bone chilling cold. But it is in these moments that I remind myself of what is coming. Surely the next season will emerge and we will be embraced by a new kind of beauty. The old will pass and the new will come.
These thoughts and emotions that are mirrored by nature can dampen our spirits. A kind of hardness and cynicism settles in. We are tempted to put our head between our knees and feel sorry for ourselves. Why do I have to live in such doom and gloom, will Spring ever come?
We forget that we do not live in a world where it is always winter and never Christmas. We have wandered far from the centuries old truth of the cycle of life. There should be great celebration in the middle of a stark and cold wood because Someone is on the move. Someone has stepped down from Heaven and He has turned back the clock. He has begun the reversal of death; life is on the horizon.
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| watercolor by Myo Win Ong |
He showed us that in living there must be dying, for only on the other side of death will a greater and fuller life emerge. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:23-25 We too must die to live. It is in the losing of our life that there is great gain. As we fix our eyes on the greater purpose of letting go in this life, we gain a peace that anchors us for the future.
With autumn we see the life of the past year prepare for a time of rest and contemplation. A preparation for life in the next year is upon us. Winter will come. The harsh storms of life will blow, but we can wrap ourselves in the comforting truth that winter will thaw and Spring will come.
Let us soak up the beauty of every season, intentionally slowing down along with nature and storing up within ourselves more hope, more knowledge in the coming seasons and of the coming One.
In Autumnal Anticipation,
Your Fellow Sojourner
