FLEETING GOLD

 A few weeks ago, green leaves on my neighbor's willow tree swung in the breeze. Then, almost overnight (it seemed), they yellowed, then flicked off the branches to cover her lawn and roof, causing quite a cleanup chore. A few found their way over the fence to my lawn. I don't mind raking them up, savoring this harbinger of the “changing of the seasons.” Sometimes the scattered leaves remind me of a classic poem, Spring's first green is gold—which, the poet Robert Frost added, is “its hardest hue to hold.”

Frost took a phenomenon of nature (for one, how the first spring blooms of a willow are actually yellow before maturing into leaves) to build a quiet symbolism of life's transitions—when those green leaves turn golden again in fall and drop. And every fall, watching this happen, I remember Frost's veiled message of life's transience.

Then I open my Bible. The apostle Paul was no “Frost,” but he wrote some things that blossom in amazing ways. One is the doxology he quoted as part of his letter to the Ephesians. It followed a section in the letter that pushed the saints to consider the incomprehensible dimensions of the love of Christ: its “width and length and depth and height” (Ephesians 3:18). One thing I never noticed about the verse (until reading this is a commentary) was how Paul used a pyramid construction to list the superlatives of God's blessings. In some ways, it's shaped like a tree with an apex at top and broader limbs on the ground. Paul wrote that God is:

Able

Able to do

Able to do what we ask

Able to do what we think

Able to do what we ask or think

Able to do all that we ask or think

Able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think

Able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think

according to

the power

that works in us.

This growth in spiritual character is the work of His Holy Spirit in us. He shows us our sin, helps us turn to prayer and confession, teaches us to worship, and brings opportunities to “bear fruit” through service to God.

Our time to do so is brief—so brief. It's so easy to sit in the soil and doing ordinary “living things,” yet failing to see the bigger purpose of life on earth. As the Westminster confession puts it: “Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Our years to do so are limited. Even willow trees eventually die after years of their green-to-gold seasonal cycle. But notice the verse's “trunk” in this illustration: “According to the power that works in us.” It's our roots, reaching deep into the soil of God's love, seeking to “bloom” and serve as He intended. Because...HE is able.