Sitting on the sunny porch of the Big A coffee shop, I feel a chill in the breeze. I look around me and see bright oranges and yellows and deep reds instead of the usual spring greens. The world around me is slowly approaching the death of winter, but in the process, is becoming more brilliant than ever.
There’s something deeply beautiful about that.
In this short transition season, we enjoy the vivid colors of the trees, cool weather, and warm pumpkin pie lattes and we don’t even think about the death in all of it.
I think that’s what makes this season my favorite. It’s not the apple cider and butternut squash—it’s the hopeful paradox of beauty and death.
The flowers and trees know that the death of winter is coming, but instead of solemnly creeping along in their existence until then, they burst into vivid glory and live their last days in brilliance.
In these last days of nature, I am surrounded by the call to live vibrantly through the times in my life that feel like they’re approaching a sort of death. My walks to class remind me that God makes my life colorful and breathtaking even when all I can see is lifelessness and all I can feel is coldness.
Through this season, I’m learning that these darker times in my life are the perfectly crafted moments where He chooses to make my life colorful and comforting—if only I decide to notice it.
This fall may you see all of God’s brilliant colors around you.
