Last of the Autumn Thoughts

A post I wrote a few weeks ago, before leaving Ohio...

I'd rather die like Christ than live like me.
I'd rather live as one without a name than live my life trying to become a name.

It is warm out, despite the wind that rushes to my heart. Yet there's a chilly expectancy in the air. The cold is not far behind. Winter is near.

Fire burns. Just look outside, where the trees are being slowly eaten up by fiery and brilliant colors. Isn't it glorious to watch? Have you ever thought that all this beauty and impossible color combinations are the signs of an intense death? These leaves have such a short life. From buds in the spring, to a short season of young and green, and finally to crunchy dead fibers in the fall.

Somehow it is perfect, though, the way the leaves go out with a bang.

We rejoice each autumn season to see the leaves die (er, to get pumpkin spice lattes and wear scarves again...).

Maybe we should mirror this happiness in dead leaves with a joy in Christ's death. In our own deaths to this world. How glorious it is to die, for everything I thought I owned to fade away, wither, perish beneath the light of the Son. To wrap myself in His glorious light and never return to the garments of the dark.

This autumn has been different than the ones before it. Instead of a flash of lightning and a forest fire that devours the leaves, this year's flame started out small. It grew slowly, crackling leaves into bright colors.

But the leaves refused to die.

They stuck around, their color deepening. A slow death. Red turned to auburn. Yellow turned to gold.

A true test by fire.

Oh, Father, may you test me in the same way. Burn away my lusts and desires till all that's left is a heart willing to do Your will. 

Decayed Soul

        The mask.

        The ploy.

                          The lie.

             The fanciful whim.

 The act of utter rebellion.

                How they terrify me. And how they fascinate me, too. They make me shudder – in fear – and recoil – in disgust – and take notice – in inquisitiveness. But you do not fear something that you cannot imagine. You do not fear something that has no root dangling in truth. These things wrought in the darkness are twisted versions of the light.

                And they are symbols, exaggerated versions, of what we really are inside.

                It is hideous to picture the soul in all of its worst moments. The mouth snarling in rage, the eyes darkened with hate, the selfish hands pleading innocent, the lazy frame waxing to nothingness, the pages and pages we could fill will all the human failures and diseases and sins.

                But what it is even more hideous is to think of these things as being not only possible but real. For Christ has made it clear that we are born into sin. That means that our souls are being eaten alive with sin. That means that though we may not all be murderers, thieves, and adulterers, we have all had thoughts to do those things…and that is just the same.

             You may not be following me. It is all concept, trailing thoughts, strange emotions rising to the surface when night coats the world and only the stars can see what is below. All revolving around a movie I just watched. 

              But haven't you felt it before?? Oh the depths of wickedness! How deep the darkness becomes! When once the feet tread upon that path, it winds swiftly to their demise.

              I am trembling at the thought. How very near the edge I could be. I shy away at the sight of this supremely ugly vision, my very insides cringing away from this ghastly business.

  We have all been seduced by the Music of the Night.

  We all wear the face of one unchanged by our deeds.

  We dare not paint a Portrait of ourselves, even for ourselves to look at.

       

               

This sounds horrible. Worse than horrible. Isn’t this depressing? Isn’t it completely detrimental to think of this, to let myself be drawn aside to look at the darkness?

Perhaps it is.

Yet I want to understand something, something I thought that perhaps I could never grasp. Growing up in a homeschooling, Christian home, there were a lot of things I didn’t see. Much of the world that I never knew. I was protected…innocent. I always thought of myself as a Christian – long before I even knew what that meant.

So when I grew (quite recently) to understand the riches of grace in God, the freedom in Christ, the beauty in the relationship with Him, I felt as if all I knew was rose petals and sugar water. I didn’t know what I was being saved from…only that this was better than anything I’d tasted before.

For me to look the darkness square in the eyes and see how easily I am that – could be that – is horrific. And I’ve never seen it before. Death has nothing to do with breathing our last breath. Death has everything to do with decay, inside and out.

This sudden and terrifying realization of darkness and sin and a life full of death is…I can’t quite say what it is. It’s not what I expected. I’m sure it won’t be the last time that I look past the flesh we wear and see a glimpse of soul that is darker than a pit.

Yet swirling past and in and out of this darkness is truth. Truth that my heart can grasp like a lifeline, rest upon like a rock in a desert of swirling sands:

The darkness is not to be feared.

Fear is not something that the light knows.

Rather, darkness fears the light, and draws away from it.

So, my soul, do not despair. Look into this darkness and see the hollowness of its eyes and remind it that it is only a shadow leftover from the light. That is has power, oh yes, but that there is a greater power, a power that I - even I, a nobody fluttering around in the midst of earth - I have access to.

"Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, thought he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?’ " John 11:25-26