[video]https://youtu.be/q2KOluWrjU8[/video]
Had you asked me at the age of 10, I’d have said, spring is my favorite season, for then it was more free. To play with animals and dawdle if I chose to when doing chores; to learn and grow and take pride in the steps of living. At 21, I’d have chosen summer. Lakes and streams, mountains and love were my dimensions then. At 50, I like autumn more every year. It’s the culmination of chores, growth, pride and all those things. I found that I like to work, I like to ponder and learn, I like challenges. I appreciate who I was then, and I like who I am now, even with all the scars and sorrows no one ever sees. I LIKE who I am. I hope you can say this as well, someday, if not today, that you
like who you are.
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“To everything there is a season…”Ecclesiastes 3:1[/h]
The seed – Our core. We have no control over how we begin or even where we are planted. We are totally dependent on our maker, on our ancestry. Our control may begin in the womb. Do we truly hear what is spoken? Are we selective in what we hear? Do we make decisions based on this before we are even born? Do we still hear our Father God?
Then comes the day, we breathe our first breath. We are given life. We are given family. And our family chooses for us the quality of life in those first years. We choose to accept their gift or rebel. Looking at the prodigal son, one would think we go astray around 16. Not so. Rebellion starts much earlier. Look at the infant who’s first word is Mamma or Dada, and secondly comes the big one, “No.” Then it’s “Bye, bye”.
God thinks the infant is beautiful, even still.
Like trees, we may grow alone or in the shadow of many others. A sapling grows quickly, yet it is not about height but heart that makes us grow strong.
God prunes. He giveth, and He taketh away. Job 1:21 We choose how we accept these changes. For as long as we holler, “That’s not Fair”, our fate stays pretty rocky. Our growth is stunted. Sometimes we must be pruned in the same place over and over again, until we get it right. Perhaps we grow tall and straight. Perhaps in that we have our greatest gift of faith, but what if we’re like brother #2 of Luke 15:11-32 who shouts out because we are not as noticeable as the tree that grows helter skelter and offers more shade and color? We are not all meant to be shade trees, nor are we all meant to be walnut trees, strong and steady.
We spend our summer in our God-given path chosen for us, developing our core. We also develop our personality making our most horrendous mistakes…these are the times we choose whether or not we’re going to easily accept the pruning or if we complain about it.
Late summer, we choose again, whether or not to bear fruit. We can be like the fig tree, Mark 11:12-15, and choose not to use our gifts to honor Jesus, or we can develop them and sing like the canary that rests in the branches. Whether off key or quietly humming, we can still offer Him a gift.
It’s not easy to develop. Look at a branch. Take the branch of an apple tree. The branch divides and grows and divides and grows…until the smallest twig, blossoms. It comes with pain and suffering. The wind, the rain, the sleet, the noise…let it come though…for as we stretch ourselves to the limit, pushing ourselves to conquer this pain, we hit a wall and it eases and an apple breaks out. Starting deep in our core echoing out to the most fragile part of ourselves, we stretch and twist and sometimes untwist, sometimes when the sun is warm and beckoning to when it falls beneath the horizon. Buds appear and we bear fruit over and over again. Bud to bud, apple to apple. Fruit bears fruit.
We, children, bear gifts of faith.
Eventually, for all creation, summer passes. We rest for a bit. In the autumn of our existence, we change again. This is the time our true color comes through. The fruit is gone, the leaves change. Are they yellow? Orange? Deep reds? Are they forever green?
I’ve heard some say they dislike autumn because everything is dying. Yet, the truth is, when the leaves change, they are indeed showing their true color. Everything they ever dreamed, hoped, chose in their lives to that point blossoms truth. For better or worse, autumn comes.
What are your colors? How beautiful are you?
Golden wheat fields. Dry cornfields, bearing bushel upon bushel of grain. Where did the seeds fall? For you? Can anyone glean from your leftovers after the harvest? That’s as important as the yield itself. Ask anyone in eternity who was initially left behind.
Do you remember the spring? The sorrows in the rain? Do you remember the overbearing heat of summer? Now, in the fall, what you’ve gained over the course of your life – however long – it shows. If following God’s path and will, you can know, you will not leave this earth until you have done all He wishes for you to do. (David Jeremiah, The Handwriting on the Wall).
Are your gifts ripe? Ready to pass on?
Are they gifts of integrity, courage, strength, hope? Or are they deceit, lies, evil?
Have they been watered with faith that they might be received with Joy by the creator? Do you have a pleasant odor for the Lord? Are they apparent or merely good intentions?
Valuable are your insights. Share them; confess them – for this is your wisdom as you leave the autumn of your life and partake of the cup of the Ancient of Days, Daniel 7:9…passing on wisdom and all the gifts you’ve chosen to offer as a witness to the greatest, most awesome miracle of all. In thanksgiving, you tell your story. History. His story.
And your part in it.
Then, as you enter the winter season; when the leaves have fallen; the fruit is gone. Spring and summer are merely distant memoirs of past seasons – then, you’ll be ready to breathe in the cold, icy air. Perhaps tinged by sarcasms of youth. Sarcasms you relate to, for perhaps they were once your own.
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Socrates. “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” [/h] Are you waiting, afraid to pass your torch or are you well prepared, in whatever season you are in, to greet your heavenly Father, knowing that but by the grace of God all the pain, sorrow and fruit you bore was never your own? Knowing that, if not for God, we could do nothing?
Drop all you have at His feet and pray for a steady heart, a heart steady for the things of God.
I once prided myself on no breaks. My nose didn’t break when the softball slammed into it. It hurt, it bled profusely, but it didn’t break! I never broke an arm or a leg. I felt pretty good about that. One day I sprained a foot and thought
it was broken. An x-ray proved this was not so, yet when the doctor asked the next question, I was speechless.
“When did you break your foot before?”
“I didn’t”, I answered.
“Oh, yes you did,” came his reply. “You must have just ‘toughed it out”.
If nothing breaks for you in this life, no bones per se, let one thing break. Your heart. Let it be broken for the things that break the heart of God. (Robert Pierce).
Our efforts now are the things we are most challenged by. What we manage to do today, do we offer it to Him? Is it a garden out of control with weeds that overtake the good things? If so, go to the table. Drop the weights and wait no longer to take Him on your journey.
There is only one way.
John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word…”
It is His judgment then, when all has passed , that we must look to. Were we Good? Were we faithful? Did we serve or were we served?
Will we be ashamed of the pride we carried? Pride that does nothing for us, lest we share the gifts of love?
We can answer questions that may be asked of us then…
“Did you gossip?”
“Did you judge?”
“Did you allow Him into your life?”
“Did you abide under the shadow of His wings?
If we are able to answer these honestly, would they all be “Yes”? Would we wish some were not true? And will we reach for Jesus, our lawyer, and allow Him to answer for us? And then cry – our final tears? Will they be for Him?
Before the final chapter is written; make the effort and ask Jesus to come to you. He will run to you,
if you open your heart to Him. Ask Him, that He might write you into His will – His book of life.
He loves us that much. From conception to our final breath, He has that much to offer. He carries us in His heart, accepts us as family. Children with dirt-streaked faces. Faces he gently wipes clean and allows us to shine, even still.
All we must do – is choose. Choose this day whom ye will serve…Joshua 24:15
If we choose – and He gave us this answer. For the question of life or death, He told us exactly what the answer is, “Choose life”. If we choose life, we come into His rest.
It is a choice. Is it yours?
Are YOU willing to choose Him?
