Those leaves

Because the cliche is so familiar, I've sometimes let it color my thinking.

You know how we compare our lives to the seasons, so that a young man is like the spring. A mature man is summertime and onward to the elderly, who are like winter. You know the rhythm of new life in spring, usually accompanied by buds and fresh blossoms. Then summer focuses on broad green leaves followed by the rich golds and oranges of fall leaves.

But winter is the time of brown dead leaves falling uselessly to the ground.

That isn't a hopeful image for us as we continue to clock up the years of our lives. Do we believe that image, that the end of our life falls, like dead leaves, uselessly to the ground?

As my body ages, I find that my mind wants to bear fruit. I want to be the tree planted in the living water of God's word, drawing from God's life and wonder. Is that my proud humanity, refusing the face the reality of time?

Well, there's another image in the Psalms. Look at this:

They will still bear fruit in old age,
they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, "The LORD is upright;
he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."
Psalms 92:14-15

God never intended for our last years to be as useless as dry leaves but fruitful to our exit to heaven.