If I were in charge of decorating Heaven, it would always be Autumn. There’s just something magical about Fall, when God swaps the green and pale gold color palette of Summer for bright reds, oranges, and yellows. I’m sure many of you are raising a Pumpkin Spice Latte in agreement. I’m hardly in the minority here. And beyond the colors and the crisp sweater-weather air, the sports fan in me loves the harmonic convergence of playoff baseball, football season in full-swing, and both hockey and basketball just getting their respective seasons going. People can and do have other favorite seasons, but throw in the smell of bonfires and burning leaves and it’s hard to see how.
With all the beauty and excitement that Autumn brings, it’s easy to forget that it’s actually a time of decay and death. Leaves turn those beautiful hues and then drop off, withering to a crusty brown before being raked into piles, or if you have a mulching mower, ground up into leaflets (which reminds me that Fall also means political campaigns. Okay, so maybe it’s not entirely perfect.) Lawnmowers get winterized as grass goes dormant. Pretty soon the trees are bare, except for the evergreens decked out in their pre-Christmas best. Nature starts settling in for a hopefully-not-too-long Winter’s nap.
Why does God reserve some of the most spectacular displays of His creation for this time of natural winding down? Why not show them off in Spring, when everything is renewing, ripe with life and possibility? Perhaps it’s to give nature a “grand finale” – one last show of vibrant fireworks before things go dark and grey and the smoke drifts on. It certainly is that, but I believe there’s a deeper reason He chose for things dying beautifully in the final months of the year. Perhaps it’s because as His children, we above all other creation have a hope of dying beautifully too.
For those of us who have chosen to follow Jesus, death is, in many ways, a constant. Jesus calls us to constantly die to ourselves. To paraphrase John the Baptizer (Baptist? I can’t see him actually choosing a particular denomination) – we become less so he becomes more. This is hardly a decaying kind of death though. It’s a transformation, and it starts when we begin to let go of our own assumptions and expectations about who we are, and who we are meant to be. As trees let go of dying leaves each Fall, we need to let go of those desires and thoughts that would keep us from becoming everything that God made us to be.
In his book Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis makes that case that perhaps the greatest purpose of being a Christian is in becoming more like Christ. While having our sins washed away and being given hope of eternal life with God is great, the true point of everything Jesus did here on earth, including the cross, is to show us what God really intended a human being to be. And not just human beings, but humans being. Jesus often said that “the Kingdom of God is at hand.” Usually that was preceded by an admonition to “repent.” And while each of us should feel sorry and repent for the sins we may commit each day, I believe there’s something else to His words that runs deeper.
Perhaps true, ultimate repentance is to not only admit our sinfulness and desire to be better. Perhaps it is to enter into a true posture of surrender. Giving everything over to God and His will. No personal agendas. No worries about outcomes, fears about what-ifs, and no striving to “make something of ourselves.” It is to truly follow Jesus example and live each day for God, by the grace of God, trusting Him to lead us to exactly where we need to be to do exactly what He’s calling us to do in that moment. Often, what He’s calling us to do is to show His love to others through kindness, selflessness, and sacrifice. When we do that, we walk more closely in Jesus’ footsteps, becoming more like Him as we live out our mortal lives awaiting His return and the eternal joy that awaits us. And in doing so, we show His grace and mercy to others by dying, beautifully, to ourselves.