Leaf Subsides to Leaf
Nature’s
first green is gold
Her hardest
hue to hold.
Her early
leaf’s a flower;
But only so
an hour.
Then leaf
subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank
to grief,
So dawn goes
down to day.
Nothing gold
can stay.
Few things
are as beautiful as blossoms adorning the once-barren branches of trees,
reaching upward and taking the eye and the mind of the beholder heavenward.
After the seemingly dead world of winter, the new life of spring brings with it
a promise and anticipation that can restore hope to the heart. The darkness and
cold and lifelessness will not last forever. There is yet life in those dead,
winter branches—life that is revealed in the spring as a reminder that we will
all live again. As with much of the Christian world, I find also in this
reawakening of life a reminder of Him who is the Giver of life. The blossoms
and buds and greening branches serve as symbols of Him who rose again and will
bring about our own immortality.
And yet for
all my love of spring—or perhaps because of it—I ache at its transitory nature.
This beautiful display of flower and gold lasts only a moment before the
blossoms fall to the ground, to be crushed and trampled and replaced by the much
more durable leaves. The promise and hope of early springtime transitions into
full-fledged summer. As one who simultaneously despises change and loves
beauty, spring inevitably finds me seeking desperately to cling on to this transient
reality, not quite willing to step down from something that seems so exalted
into the more workaday world of heat and leaves. I don’t want the day or the
summer to come—I want dawn to remain just a little longer, the blossoms to
linger, the leaves to hold off.
My life
right now finds me in a sort of springtime; a period of transition that I don’t
yet want to release from my grasp. After years of preparation and study and
work—with my fair share of dark, lifeless days—the promise of change is on the
horizon with my upcoming graduation from BYU. This is my final spring as a
student here at the university I’ve loved since I was a child. As with all of
my life changes, I find myself looking at the beauty and blossoms around me,
wondering how full-blown leaves could possibly be better than the blossoms and
flowers I am now experiencing. And yet, one of the promises of spring is that
things will get better. Yes, there is green instead of gold come summertime.
But we need that green. We need the shade of the trees and the growth of corn.
We need summer. We need daytime. Perpetual dawn would never allow us to
progress or work or change. The transitions in our lives are beautiful, but
only inasmuch as they provide for further growth and development. If Eden had
not sunk to grief, she likewise could not have “sunk” to joy, for these two
entities are inseparable. Summer, with its beating sun, exhaustion of work, had
to follow the relaxation and beauty of spring.
I find it
reassuring that in these times of transition and change, God gives us the
beauty of blossoms and flowers and chirping birds to comfort us. He gives us
these promises of beauty and joy yet to be that will exceed what we can
currently grasp. He is with us during the transitions of life.
But we have
to have the courage to move forward out of the transition period into the
unknown summer. We have to trust that there truly are better things to come.
Because God didn’t create spring so that it could last forever—He made it to
usher in the summer. And Christ’s Resurrection—as glorious as that moment was
when the Savior burst the bands of death and rose from the grave—was to impact
not simply that instant, but to usher in His own immortality and the opportunity
for all of us to join Him. These moments of beginnings, while beautiful in and
of themselves, were intended to bring about so much more.
So as much
as I love the blossom, and as scared as I am of losing the flower, when the
unknown leaf replaces this transitory beauty, I hope to embrace it.
Nicely done.
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