Autumn

I climb the steps of the pier and walk the old gravel road.

I long for those July nights, when the fireflies kept us dancing in bottle-capped pursuit.

But summer days too cannot be jarred up in a bottle,

and here I find myself again –

kicking leaves that were far too beautiful to fall.

Every crunch beneath my shoes is a painful reminder of the inevitable. 

Winter, that grumpy old bear, would soon settle down for his long nap. And we too would be forced to hibernation – viewing the silence and obscurity of the world through frosted window panes. Presented with an endless canvas of white and grey, and waiting with a hope deferred for the colours of the crocus to usher in new life.

Winter is grouchy, but autumn seems cruel. A season suspended between promise and silence, she seems to do nothing more than delay the destination. “What is the point?”, I ask myself, mourning broken leaves.

“Autumn shows My grace”, I hear a voice within me say. 

“Look up”. 

A palette unsurpassed in splendour - gold and amber infused with royal red and purple, flickers of sunlight setting maple leaves ablaze. 

Beauty so intoxicating that it angers me. 

“Why God, do You roll out the red carpet for our wintery death? Why tease us with such beauty above when its destiny is the soil below?

And then the answer comes. “It's a celebration of surrender”.

A golden leaf falls from the branch and quietly floats its way down to my feet. 

The fall seems so peaceful, as if the leaf was made for that single moment. 

I observe its perfection – all the veins intact and the contours symmetrical. And then I seem to understand something new. 

Perhaps God sees beauty not so much in spite of death, but because of it. 

Perhaps our finest moment is when we choose to fall.

I follow the smell of burning cedar back to my home, and my thoughts drift to my Saviour. His ultimate humility was in giving His glory away. Soon that amber-flecked leaf would do the same. I look behind once more at those old maples. And then I kick the ground again, sending a pile of brittle brown airborne. The winter chill whips through my clothes, and I hug my chest even tighter.

And then perhaps the most worship-filled words I have ever declared roll off my tongue: “Yes, Lord. Yes, Lord”.

(an extract by my friend, Sam Jooste)