NEW SEASON, OLD LEAVES

NEAR SEDONA, ARIZONA

“They are autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted—twice dead.”  Jude 12

I like the hush of autumn; its quietness is so huge.

It falls like cotton around me, swallowing me whole with its cushiony throat.

First my ears go down its gullet, and then my tongue is stilled.

The rest of me falls motionless in a comforting paralysis.

I think it is a most holy season when the din of fans can die,

And finally we can listen unhindered to the whisperings of God.

Autumn is so lovely.  Even its name—autumn—falls eloquently from the tongue and is beautiful to look at with its silent “n” just hanging out there so unobtrusively beside sister “m” who gets all the press. It seems to be just an in-between season hanging on to the leftovers of summer, when everyone came out to play hard, while serving as a harbinger of winter, when we all will go back in to recover so we can do it all again next summer. But it isn’t just a memory of one time or a preview of another.  Autumn is a glorious season by its own merits.  It is a quiet glory, though, bidding us be still and listen to gentle rustlings.  It can be a time when we slow down after summer’s rush to listen to how God might want to be preparing us for the seasons ahead.  It can be a time when we let old foliage fall away to make room for the fruit he is forming inside.

Some of the most beautiful imagery in the entire Bible is in the little book of Jude, just one chapter long, tucked between John’s three epistles and Revelation.  Jude’s imagery here is a little confusing at first:  autumn is not the time for fruit, so why should the tree be uprooted?  And what does “twice dead” mean? 

 Jude, probably the half brother of our Lord, wrote this letter to warn his readers to be on guard against false teachers who were perverting the meaning of grace so as to give license to sin so that grace “could abound,” to use the words of Paul. It occurs to me that many times I am my own worst false teacher of this doctrine. Sometimes I want to allow myself great liberties; I want to hold on to the thrills of a bygone season of my life when God wants me to shed those and enter into His deeper thrills.  Because He has been gentle with me— bestowed such grace upon me— I fear the heartaches of letting go of what I know to reach out to what I don’t know more than I fear God and the consequences He might allow if I do not obey Him. And so in this season when He desires to strengthen my roots in preparation for fruit to come in a future season, I refuse to shed the rapturously-colored leaves I glory in.  Thus, I am “twice dead”—first, dead to the faith work I need to consent to right now, and secondly, dead to the possibility of the future fruit God envisions for me.  Without his grace, I would already be uprooted.

On the brink of this new season, purpose to allow old foliage to fall away.  Dare to embrace the naked starkness of the outside to enable every bit of the nourishment to go to the roots.  Let us get silent before God and ask Him what must go in order for His way-down-deep growth to best be accomplished in us.  Autumn to the branches can be springtime to the core.

“Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”  2 Corinthians 4:16