That Time of Year

 

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
Upon the boughs that shake against the cold,
Bare, ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

Shakespeare’s lovely Sonnet 73 contains the message that we learn to appreciate things and people when we know we’re about to lose them. The poet uses three metaphors for life: a year, a day, and a fire. Each—the day, the year, and the fire—is coming to an end. In some ways, the poem is a bit melancholy, but I like to focus on the beauty that is undeniably present in each situation: autumn colors, sunset, and glowing embers. Obviously, it’s the autumn colors that are on my mind this week. 

I sit on my porch and just marvel at the red in the dogwood leaves against the deep yellow hickory across the street. Driving to school or church, I have to make myself watch the road, so beautiful are the colors around me. I was telling my granddaughter Wren that the color in the leaves is there all year, but we don’t see it until the chlorophyll goes out of the leaves to reveal it. That simple explanation is mostly correct, but the truth is that lots of changes bring about the colors we enjoy this time of year—chemical changes caused by temperature and amount of light. We are women; we know about chemical changes. Am I right?

And here I find another object lesson to ponder as I sit on my porch or walk in my neighborhood. Through all the changes of my life, do I appear beautiful? What is revealed when my “true colors” show through? We are all experiencing change, regardless of our age. It’s a fact of life. But I’ve been meditating on James 1 recently, and I take great pleasure in noting that our God does not change. In fact, we read that He is the one “in whom is no variableness neither shadow of turning.”

When changes come to us, we may view them as trials, but these trials can have the result of developing patience in our lives, of making us more beautiful than ever before, making us “perfect and entire” and a little more like our Heavenly Father.

The first chapter of James has other lessons drawn from nature. Why not read it now? Better yet, memorize a few verses you can meditate on as you take a walk in this lovely weather--before it goes away. 

--Sherry Poff