True Colors

Sharathon is over. The leaves are crisp and burnished bright with razor sharp beauty. Colors so clear that they burn even brighter under a shadowy sky. This is fall… this is God’s storybook illustration painted across the fields and carved into the hills. I know some look at fall with sadness, thinking about chilly days and bare trees. But when I look at out this last dying dance of leaves I see something else. I see the covering of chlorophyll green dropping away and blindingly brilliant colors blazing through. Ruby reds… yellow golds… rich orange and russets so deep and thick you can almost taste them. This is the glory of God’s living earth unmasked… as it dies, it’s true colors are revealed.
When you work in a ministry, it’s so easy to put on the pretty Christian face and keep your attitude an artificial summer green. But if I am truthful… if I’m going to really let Jesus express the rich colors of His life inside of me – I have to die. I have to let go of those things that I use to cloak and create my secure little bubble of a life…. Like money. Like power. Like gas pumps and groceries and elections….. even Sharathon totals.
Sharathon is over. The leaves are lovely and falling into pools of color in my yard. Leaves that will soon be brown, broken, and blown away. But in their dying is a picture book promise…
Spring. New life. New beginnings. And so much more than I can ever imagine. I don’t know what these days will bring – but I know that in shedding our masks and abandoning ourselves to God – we will find out who we truly are…
And His colors will shine through.