As the world around us becomes Autumn, we begin to recall the fleeting nature of life. The days have shortened and continue to shorten, and the weather is becoming more bitter as we approach the winter. As the leaves fall off our deciduous trees and the grass turns more and more beige, we can’t help but see that the structure of life includes a thing we call “death.” True, the trees are not actually dying, but their external life is going to sleep.
It is fortunate for us that the world continues this steady cycle of seasonal change. With modern conveniences like heating, cooling, transportation, etc., not much of the regularity of our daily lives actually changes with the turn of the season. We can live under the illusion that things will just keep on running as they always have. Still, as human beings who change and who one day will undergo a truly substantial change in death, we need the reminder that life here is not going to last forever.
For the Christian, however, this reminder does not come without hope. Autumn is followed by Winter, an even bleaker season, but then comes Spring! Spring always comes, life seeps back into the landscape with every budding leaf and flower. The death of Fall awaits its Springtime, and our own natural death awaits a future resurrection. We place our hope in Christ. We have the faith that after the decline of our life and our future death, our Lord will appear like the warmth of the sun in Spring to raise our bodies to new life, never to die again.
I offer you a poem on this theme, the falling Autumn leaves:
They fall… and silhouettes
And twigs and limbs of wooden beasts
Are left to break the white-gray sky.
They fall… some green, maroon,
Orangeish brown warm colored
Lifeless engines of life – their hue
Suspended in time by the chilled
And buoyant breath
Of nature.
Some stay… a gradient of death
Attached to the skeleton that remains,
Still, moved by nothing
But the sharp and constant breath
Of the north.
Frozen structures devoid of feeling,
Growth, and color; dormant
Waiting for life and light. Asleep
Till boldened by the springtime sun.