Dear Friends,
I love the season of Fall. The change in temperature, the color of the leaves, the smells, even the anticipation that something new is about to happen. It reminds me of a story I once heard.
A pastor was meeting with a group of 5th graders. It was a question and answer time. The pastor began…you can ask me any question you like…and then jokingly added…just don’t ask why the sky is blue. The class sat in silence thinking for a while, and then a girl raised her hand and asked… “Why are the leaves green?” Before the pastor could respond….the young lady answered her own question. She said, “You know that green is not their true color. You don’t see their true color until the fall.”
Think about it…the leaves on a tree don’t show their true colors until they have lived their life and are about to die. I wonder if the same is true for us as well. We live our life day to day, interacting with the people we live and work with. Greeting friends and those we hardly know in the grocery store. Maybe even saying hi at a sports event, or at church on Sunday morning to those we regularly worship with. But do we ever really let someone know us and our true colors. What are we really like on the inside. Or, is it only after we die that people come to know us in a few paragraphs in the paper, and the true colors of who we have been are revealed. This body we are given is only a shell that God has blessed us with temporarily. What is on the inside of us…our colors… are what make us who we are. And that is God’s gift to the world…forever.
There is sadness in the Fall for me. When the cold has settled in….the leaves have all changed and fallen to the ground....and the sun drops lower and lower in the sky. We know what is coming, the death of winter. It comes to all of us. But even though we know it does….we also know we will rejoice again. For after the dead of winter, comes the new life of Spring.
God’s promise to us is like that. Death is a gate way to new life. So we can rejoice in the gift of life that God gives us. Winter comes, death comes, but for us both are only temporary. Winter turns to spring and death turns into new life, a life that never ends with our God. And in some mysterious, Godly way, maybe it frees us to live our true colors with each other now, revealing the beauty of creation that God has placed in your life for the world to marvel at. So Praise God for life. Praise God for Fall and the true colors of the leaves.
God’s peace and strong presence be with you and your family as you live your true colors.