Embracing the Beauty of Change
October 2023 Devotional
Fall is my favorite season, full stop. The changing temperature, the culture of community that comes with ball games and hay rides and fairs, moving headlong into the holidays, all the sports, jokes about the fall of the patriarchy, etc… It's really the most wonderful time of the year.
The permeating theme of change inspires me as well. While school is in full swing and our schedules are falling into sped-up routines after the "lazy days of summer," all of creation is instead shifting and slowing down for its annual hibernation. One of my favorite quotes about this time of year annually reminds me that "the trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let go of the dead things." And what a way to say it! Because that's really what those gorgeous colors around us indicate– the death of the leaves, a transition to a new phase of life.
I, for one, tend to balk at change. I love my routines and the familiarity of being sure of people and places. Which makes my love of fall all the more paradoxical. The one who often clings to dead things also glories in the dropping of dead things in nature. As much as I think I crave sameness, nothing about the life God has given us grows in immobility. Scripture compares believers to growing things, seeds, vines, and trees; our lives are described as walks and journeys. To live is to move. The dead things drop so that new things can grow in their place.
This season tends to bring me around to the words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes 3: There is an occasion for everything and a time for every activity under heaven…. He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also put eternity in their hearts, but no one can discover the work God has done from beginning to end. I know there is nothing better for them than to rejoice and enjoy the good life. It is also the gift of God whenever anyone eats, drinks, and enjoys all his efforts. I know that everything God does will last forever; there is no adding to it or taking from it. God works so that people will be in awe of him. Whatever is, has already been, and whatever will be, already is. However, God seeks justice for the persecuted (v1, 11-15).
God knew before He created time what the times and seasons of our lives would be, when we would be in a season of growing and when we would be in a season of dropping the dead things.
Learning to see the season we are in and embracing both the pruning and the growing is one of the most challenging but most beautiful parts of maturing in our walk with Jesus.
So keep growing, beloved. Dropping the dead things is beautiful because living faith grows in their place.
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