Fall has always been my favorite season. It holds still the golden rays of summer but carries them down on cooler winds, with a metamorphosis unparalleled by any other season.
In all reality, it’s a season of starvation and dying— that process at which we marvel, the fiery, golden autumnal splendor— is one of slow death.
If you know me— (geek at heart) you know I’m going to give a little science 101 behind this, but promise it will be quick:
Leaves owe their green to the chlorophyll in the photosynthetic process— but chlorophyll production tanks as cooler, darker months set in- and we can suddenly see the more golden colors that have been masked underneath. It’s a subtractive process.
But as cold nights continue, sugars and saps and flavonoids react- we see reds and even deep magentas emerge before total death occurs at the stem and leaves are dropped; and further degradation eventually renders that beautiful leaf brown and decayed.
But you and I know- the leaf may be dead, and the tree may appear that way- but it’s not the case. Winter may cause that appearance, and we may not know how long it may last (fellow Michiganders, am I right?!)- but it’s still full of life.
Springtime will bring forth beautiful new growth.
Maybe we need to learn to appreciate the seasons of Fall in our lives— the uncomfortable things, the beauty in the shedding of the parts of life that need to fall. The things we need to shed. The weights and burdens we need to drop.
In presumed death there is always new and necessary new growth- life always holds seasons for us, and each holds beauty-
If we are willing to see it.
Look up at the color of the leaves, and not the crumbled brown decay on the forest floor.
Happy October—
Let’s choose to see the beauty, in all things.
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.” (Isaiah 43:19, ESV)
(Original photographs; please don’t steal. Thank you!)