One day last fall I was walking near my office enjoying the changing leaves and spending some time in prayer. I was struck by the beauty of the leaves as they displayed a bright and vivid array of color. As I walked and enjoyed the beauty of creation as it was being made ready for the long winter ahead, I thought on something very curious about nature in its fallen state and man's place therein. It struck me that what I was enjoying really was the process of death, at least for the leaves. We are fascinated with death. Though we fight so hard to avoid it.
I thought about friends and loved ones who have gone on to meet their maker. I considered how it seemed as though it were yesterday that we were together, working and enjoying one another. Then I thought about the span of time that had come between us. It seemed as though a rush of melencholy and loneliness blew along with the wind that day. I felt the sadness and the loss as I looked on those leaves. I felt the distance of time between us. I can remember my grandfather's cabin, as I would run down the back porch stairs and bound across the path toward the creek past which he used to love to spend so much of his time. I can remember his smiling and joyous face as he saw me coming. I can even remember the trees around him, they seemed big to me as a child, but they weren't much larger than him. The last time that I saw those trees they were no longer man sized trees, but many had grown to be giants. I remember it seemed the last time that I was there as though a profound and painful loneliness stretched over me as I looked to the place where he had once stood so many years before.
Death is no friend to man. Time and distance shatter once close relationships and render strangers those who were once close friends. Death humbles all men and renders all man's greatest efforts at life useless. Oh that death might be done away with.
Your assignment this week, is to read: Genesis 12:1-5, 49:28 Ponder the span of time between Jacob and his grandfather Abraham and reflect on how time, distance and death have touched your life. Then think on the promise of the resurrection.
Happy Thanksgiving!
