I ran 3 miles today after Dakota and I tossed a tennis ball around. I prepared for rain, as it’s November and every day’s forecast for the next 10 lists at least “chance of rain”. But it didn’t rain. The night sky held a few stars but no moon. The ground was damp. Fallen leaves, downed by last week’s wind, muddled into a slurry under my feet. I took deep breaths of the chilly air.
As I passed the fast food restaurant across from Denny’s, I noticed the 4 trees standing at attention in a grassy strip. Most of the other deciduous trees in town stand dark and bare, leafy cover long gone. This quartet of trees has nearly full coverage. But the colors! Green shot through with red and gold and flame. Each tree has a slightly different palette. Under the street lights and the ambient glow of the restaurant’s signage, they stand tall and beautiful. They’re in no rush to divest their foliage. They patiently wait for their time to let go and enter the next season.
Frankly, they put me to shame. Can I stand in the season that I’m in, with patience and faith? Can I continue to keep on keeping on? Surely, I can reflect God’s grace while waiting. I don’t have to weep and gnash my teeth. All that orthodontia work from my teenage years shouldn’t go to waste, after all. I can see so very little from my finite perspective. God’s perfect timing is worth waiting for.
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
Dancing in the Rain 