Fall

Many moons ago, Ray Thomas of the Moody Blues spoke a recitation at the end of a song: “When the white eagle of the north is flying overhead, and the browns, reds and golds of autumn lie in the gutter dead. . .”

. . . “remember then, summer birds with wings of fire, come to witness spring’s new hope, born of leaves decaying. As new life will come of death, love will come of living.” The autumn season has another name: Fall. . . and for good reason. . . the leaves fall. . . as they will this year, as they have every year. This has happened 75 times since this writer entered this life on earth. Meditating on fall this year reminds me of the many historical falls that have befallen life and life’s institution throughout the history of this earth. There was the original fall of mankind, when Adam and Even fell out of the Creator’s grace and were expelled from garden of Eden. Since that fateful beginning, there have been multitudes of “falls”. The first one that comes to my mind is the fall of the Roman empire. As far as that goes, there have many falls of empires. . . the fall of Babylon, the fall of the third reich, the fall of America into MAGA (make America go away). . . the fall of the house of Usher, an abandoned structure that fell into ruin . . .

The cold hard truth about this life is that, ultimately, we will all go down to the grave, buried in the earth to decay, just like the leaves that fall in the autumn season. Autumn is the season when the life process seems to fall apart. The leaves fall; the temperatures fall. So autumn inspires a metaphor to commemorate the falling apart of all good things that we had earlier depended on, or appreciated. In human history and society, we notice the fall of people into moral depravity, wherein some people fall into sexual infidelity, wherein their marriage to a faithful mate is destroyed. Then there’s also the fall of societal or governmental leaders who forsake their constitutional or moral duties to uphold the standards. . . the principals and laws. . . to which nature and nature’s God had originally bound them. History reveals the fall of great institutions. The fall of the Roman empire released the seeds of Christianity into European history. Dissention among the factions wrought destructions.

And yet, still yet, we are reminded of so many entities and things that fall apart; yet they are sometimes renewed again in some unforeseen way. I am reminded of that Moody Blues recitation: after the browns, reds and golds lie in the gutter dead. . . “Remember then: summer birds, with wings of fire. . . come to witness springs new hope, born of leaves decaying”. . .

The cycle of life and death went uninterrupted through thousands, millions of years. . .until the Son of Man was crucified, then was laid into the earthen tomb, only to defy death itself by His resurrection. You believe that? Think about it. Why not choose victory of Faith over the death cycle of fallen leaves, fallen seasons, fallen years fallen, lives? Glass half Full