Musings on an Autumn Day
God is in everything, even in the most dark, despicable, and dismal situations. The poet Wilfred Owen realised this while going through a very distressing time in his life, and he wrote on his diary from the horrid trenches of the First World War, “I, too, saw God through the mud.”
Rather than attempting to figure out what God is doing in my life, I tend to rest assured He knows what He is doing, even if I don’t particularly like it. This seems to open my eyes to beauty around me I’d otherwise miss.
In this manner I’m able to appreciate the grey morning sky, the wet and nippy autumn days without getting all worried about what lies ahead.
I can watch and admire the leaves change and fall without getting all worked up about the onset of winter, though I don’t like the freezing cold weather.
The glory of what I call “Stunning Autumn” is ending, as we swiftly move into the less brilliant but still beautiful foliage of “Bare Autumn”.
As London swiftly slips into winter, I notice during my morning runs that parts of Hyde Park with silver maple trees with its brilliant red and gold leaves are quite breathtaking.
But a large part of the park with all the other tall trees have already lost their leaves, but there seems to be young ones beneath that are just starting to change.
It seems that God has set up the ecosystem in a way that gives the young trees a little time to enjoy the sun free from the shade of their elders. I’m sure a botanist can explain the reasons for this phenomenon, but it doesn’t take anything away from the fact that it is a wonderful design.
That only a Wise God can do, and allow the young time to grow, or at least tolerate, until the old decide they’ve had enough and considerately remove themselves from the sky by becoming increasingly rotten and the home of woodpeckers, or perhaps end up becoming firewood.
That is the sort of thing I contemplate, as I gaze upon God’s wonderful creation. And it seems wiser to me to appreciate beauty in this manner than to become worried, and in a sense to question what the Lord is doing in my life.
