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.

Golden hope

I only have to look across the street to know that the summer is past, and the winter is coming.  Half a year ago, my neighbor’s tree burst into a froth of pink to herald spring. With autumn, it’s a bristle of orange leaves, having dropped its pesky little knobs of crabapples. We’ve watched its turns of the seasons for decades. Recently, that blast of orange said something else to me:

For everything there is a season,

A time for every purpose under heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard those couplets from Ecclesiastes 3 many times. They’ve become timeworn in overuse and their context forgotten.  Kind of like First Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” often recited amidst candles and flowers at weddings without a nod to its context of spiritual unruliness.

The traditional author, King Solomon, through acclaimed as “wise,” also made poor choices in amassing wives and wealth. In this passage I’m hearing a sigh that what the world calls “happiness” won’t last forever.

But the Bible doesn’t end at Ecclesiastes.  It ends at Revelation.  With Christ returning again!  And with, for those who have died, a time to be raised to eternal life.

As I write this, we’re anticipating a call to announce that grandchild number three, a little girl expected by our daughter and husband, has arrived. A time to be born!  But within this past week, three older people I cared about experienced that “time to die.” I’m grateful that all of them lived fully for Jesus. One, aware that death would come soon as her kidneys failed, even called in her social friends and asked them plainly, “Will I see you in Heaven?  Have you accepted Jesus?”

Is that a question you can answer in the affirmative?