Fall has come to the Midwest. I mean Fall. The things we fondly think of when we dream of the hot, dry days of summer transitioning over to the cool, colorful, lively shorter days of autumn: holiday plans, folks carving pumpkins and making hot apple cider, talk of what the winter might hold (cold and wet or mild and dry?), and, more brilliant than anything else, the extravagant change of colors. I think we forget how often the bright high sun of summer can sometimes mute the spectrum around us. Sure, you may have your dark greens and earthy browns and sky blues, but that’s usually the extent of what we get to see. The Fall promises to bring back to our senses the wild range of hues: scenes of radiant reds and deep purples, bright yellows and rustic oranges. Pinks and violets and even shades of green we’d forgotten existed before.
This Fall hasn’t disappointed. The Maples are especially proud, displaying their dazzling array of colors like peacocks lining the streets. Reds with purple-tipped tops, like they were dipped upside down in the sunset sky. The Poplars with their golden yellows. The majestic oaks with their orange glows. Cherries and Walnuts and Sycamores. Even the Bradford Pears, the last of the troop this year to lose their greens, clinging onto them like camouflaged soldiers holding the final line of the summer march, have started to join the others – yellow-topped and transforming before our eyes.
My wife and I live just a couple of hours from the southwestern-most stretch of the Ozarks called the Boston Mountains. (They are humble mountains. Those of you in the West would call them molehills, but we’re fond here of making mountains out of them. We take what we can get.) The foliage found here is like none other. The Ozarks may not offer skiing or elk hunting, but the view in the Fall is unbeatable. Naturally, we wanted to take a peak.
We grabbed our camera, hopped in the car, and set off toward the Mountains. Along the way, we would point out the most colorful trees, pick them out like a lineup. (We really get into this.) But, the longer we drove, the more disappointed I became. The last couple of nights had been cold – near freezing temps – and it must have been enough for the trees to drop much of their leaves and for the ones left to brown quickly. There were very few of the colors we’d seen driving around town – the yellows and oranges and purples. The Ozarks are still beautiful, but, this day at least, not for the brilliant array of Fall colors.
We made the most of our day, but I couldn’t shake my disappointment. It may sound a bit melodramatic, but I had been excited about the drive. It’s not just about trees. It’s about beauty and it’s about the adventure of sharing in it with my wife.
There’s something within the human soul that has a profound longing for beauty. Not only to see it, but to be enshrouded by it, to be enveloped in grandeur and majesty. I have often sensed that, when I am surrounded by the awe of something beautiful, my heart has room to unfold itself, even as it drinks everything in. I was excited that DeAnn and I would have this chance together to behold this dramatic transition from summer, as if God were giving us one last dose of this beauty before the long, muffled months of winter dulled the complexion of landscape in its brown and white shade and long shadows. (Winter has a beauty of its own, but it is a beauty of hope, that things will one day change and come back to life. Fall’s beauty is a last explosion of color, like the best firework that’s held for the last during a Fourth of July celebration.)
I think this is one of the ways to know more of God – to see His handiwork. It may be in fall foliage, or it may be in the splendor of a life transformed. It can come in the simplicity of a smile from someone you adore or in the innocent play of children. Maybe it’s the beauty of a job well-done, a construction job completed at last or a paper that came together just right. Or the way sometimes we have an incredible grace to persist through tough times and discover that our character has grown some through it and even by way of the suffering.
The most dazzling of all beauty is the Source of it Himself. “One thing I ask,” wrote the Psalmist, no doubt hungry for this Fount of all beauty, “that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord.” (Psalm 27:4) All the days of his life. It must be an endless supply.
