Tree Leaves

Leaves are common and yet quite uncommon. In Isaiah 64:6 are these words: “We all do fade as a leaf.” In this short statement, many lessons may be learned about our lives which it will be profitable to observe.

Only God can make a leaf. Each leaf has life, each leaf denotes the plant or bush or tree from which it fell. Each leaf in itself tells whether it is a new leaf, young in days, or an old leaf that has withstood the storms of the season and is now ready to fall. In this respect human beings are quite like the leaf. There are young ones with their soft tender years, their lovely trusting hearts, their sweet ways and with the buoyancy of youth. The years may pass by, and these begin to fade and to fail as the leaf on the tree.

Leaves are not fruit. Leaves in the Bible speak of a profession and a confession which may or may not be accompanied by fruit. Our Lord found a fig tree on which there was “nothing but leaves.” He expects more than leaves in our lives. He would have us laden with fruit for his glory and blessing for our fellows.

Leaves are born to die. They appear in the spring and we know quite well that they shall fall in the autumn. By examining the leaf after it has fallen, we may tell something of its experiences through the summer. Some fall full-sized unmarred, beautiful in colour, glorious in tints; whereas others fall curled, shrunken, sear and yellow and even perhaps eaten by worms and other enemies. Some are split and torn by the savage winds. The condition of the leaf tells either a story of protection and progress or a story of adversity and hardship. So, it is in the life of a man or woman who reaches the end of the long summer of life. A sudden gust of wind, some disease, or some accident may quickly tear the soul away from its moorings and it is blown to the grave. Some fall in the midst of the summer of life from the glorious heights of the tree top to the gutter of the street, to become soiled and wrecked long before their time. Some hang on through the storms of the seasons and cling throughout the winter to the limb of the tree as though it would not let go this life. These are they who live on, past the allotted threescore years and ten, past ninety, and attain even the century mark.

Some believers grow more beautiful as they grow older. Others give a benediction of peace as one sits in their presence. Some develop most beautiful traits of character when the hair becomes whitened with the wintry blast and the face becomes wrinkled with the sorrows of the summer. Others become crueller as age creeps on. They give way to their passionate tempers, they become unruly, hard to live with, unreasonable in their demands, unsatisfied, fault-finding, and critical. These are the leaves such as fall from the cottonwood and the peach trees. There is nothing attractive there, nothing beautiful. This leaf falls in the wind, is swept away from sight and is never missed.

Leaves such as the hard maple, which cling through the winter season, do not drop from the tree until new life appears in the balmy springtime. The fresh young buds push off the old, dead leaves, and what the storms could not do the new life does. How true this is today in our social system. The older ones who have served faithfully through the years are pushed out of the way and lose their positions because of the advent of younger ones with their fresh courage and their buoyant ambitions. Thus, the leaf must leave its accustomed place and be cast aside to wither and wilt and waste away.

There are the leaves which are so beautiful in the fall of the year that the school children gather them, place them in their books, take them to school for the teacher to see, and save them for after years. In gathering these lovely leaves, many leaves are ignored by the children because they are not attractive. They do not appeal to the child’s sense of value. There are those in life who are like this. They seem to serve only themselves. They do not care to develop those Christian graces which will make them beautiful throughout their life and especially lovely in their last days.

Fig leaves proved to be only false finery for Eve. They shrivelled and shrank and left her exposed to the eyes of an offended God. So today, leaves of profession will not suffice to hide the soul from the living Lord.

March / April 1986