Wayne Weekly “Eternal Trees”

There is something special about November. Most of us celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday and have opportunity to be with loved ones, often enjoying a feast representing the “plentiful bounty” that God has provided. We are blessed by one of the few holidays that doesn’t spell, retail!

But other than the warmth of Thanksgiving, November has its own uniqueness. Here in upstate New York, within a week into November most of the trees have lost their colorful foliage to gravity and the chilly autumn winds that announce the coming of winter. You would think that almost bare trees with just a handful of stubborn dried out leaves still clinging on…who knows how…would be a blight on the beauty of nature, but somehow it is not. Twisted limbs and scraggly branches silhouetted against the pre winter sky hold a lonely, but tell-tale story about life itself.

Seasons in life become more defined as one grows older. We step back and view the whole of life from a different angle. What we thought was important “back then” has been replaced by what we know is important now.

So it is with a tree with its foliage that blooms in the spring, spreads its rich canopy of green over the summer, colors the fall season with earth-tones, and then loses much of its beauty and significance in the winter of life.

As believers we too go through changes, but like the barren November tree, the future brings restoration and beauty and usefulness in its fullest sense. We are eternal trees, we have eternity in our hearts, reaching our limbs in praise to God.

Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.                                                               Ecclesiastes 3:11