Most people would look at the three words of the title and conclude I am referring to one of the biggest holidays of the year – Christmas. However, we’re not quite there yet, though time is moving quickly.
As I take into consideration the three words of the title, the current season immediately comes to mind – autumn, also known as fall. Have we ever considered this is the one season with the greatest amount of transformation? Not only is the weather pattern a bit topsy-turvy, but this is also the only season that involves two different changes for trees and leaves. First the leaves change color. They do so rapidly. You can see a tree with green leaves in the morning and by the afternoon, the colors have changed. It’s a very beautiful scene. There are ombre shades of orange, yellow, red and purple that adorn the leaves for what looks like a matter of moments.
The custom colors that grace the trees and decorate neighborhoods with a Hollywood-like landscape in real time, allow us to engage trees in a different way. Instead of being seen as bland and boring, they (the trees) garner a certain kind of excitement.
The excitement might be seen as short lived, especially because colorful leaves only pay a temporary visit to our gaze before dancing with the wind, to finally twirl their way to the ground. Piles and piles of dry leaves whose colors have seemed to fade become the stage we walk on daily, creating a soundtrack for every step we take, until our energy is increased enough to clean up nature’s disarray.
And yet, in the midst of the seasonal cycle that repeats every year, there is still a new thing. In Isaiah 43:19 (The Living Bible), the Lord says: For I’m going to do a brand-new thing. See, I have already begun! Don’t you see it? Even in the midst of what we have seen and heard and felt before with this season of expectation. We expect the temperatures to decrease and increase at the beginning of fall. We expect the leaves to change color and release themselves from the trees. We expect the time change that takes some of us a couple days to get used to.
Yet have we considered that while there is such beautiful transformation happening externally, there is also an opportunity for us to seize internal transformation? Take a lesson from nature in this season.
Ask yourself what do you need to change? Is it a mindset? Is it a way of doing and being?
Ask yourself, what do you need to release? People? Expectations? Defeating thoughts?
Honest assessment is always best. There is no judgment, only grace to make the necessary changes so that you can not only see the new thing, but you can be the new thing.
God is always doing a new thing.
Tis the season to allow God to do that new thing in you!
