When Leaves Fall Like Rain

The other morning, I decided to mow the lawn.  The temperature was in the thirties and you might be wondering if the lawn really needed to be mowed, especially at this time of year.  And so let me clarify—it wasn’t the grass that needed mowing, it was the leaves.

The leaves are driving me crazy.  The lawn looks messy.

And when I was a kid, my dad would send me out to rake up the leaves, but I am not a kid anymore and raking is not something I am physically capable of doing.  And my leaf blower isn’t strong enough to move wet leaves, clinging to damp grass and yesterday’s frosty leftovers.

So I mowed the leaves.

I have a tiny little yard.  It did not take long.  It still exhausted me.  But when I was through, the lawn looked good.

Success.

Several hours later, I peered out the front window to get another look at my beautiful lawn.

You can probably guess what I saw.

The lawn was covered in a sea of yellow leaves, the wind moving through them in waves.  It was as if the tree had said to its leaves, “Look, she made room for us down there.  Go on now, get.  Shoo.”

Or more accurately, it looked like every tree on the block had sneezed on my yard.

Why do I even bother, right?

In today’s reading from Luke 11:37-52, we see a side to Jesus that maybe we aren’t so used to seeing.  We’re used to see Jesus exhibit an extraordinary amount of patience with people (with the exception maybe of the flipping the tables thing), but here He just tears into the Pharisees.  He calls them “fools” in verse 40 and then three times, in verses 42, 43 and 44 He says to them, “Woe to you!”

All of which causes the lawyers to respond with a different kind of “whoa” as in “Whoa there Jesus, when you insult them, you insult us,” which means that these lawyers never learned the lesson that when Mom and Dad are yelling at your brother and sister, you, never, never draw their attention to you.

Because here Jesus rips into the lawyers too again with the “Woe to yous” in verses 46, 47 and 52. 

And perhaps I am projecting a little bit, but I have to wonder if Jesus is exhausted here, if cynicism is beginning to grow within Him, if He is starting to think, “Why even bother?”

We are God’s creation, but we are horribly flawed.  Why even bother?

And yet, Jesus does bother.

Thank goodness.

Because underneath our sinful stinkiness, is an inner core, a fertile spirit, already seeded with hope and promise.

God sees this in each one of us.

God knows who we truly are and the goodness we are capable of, and the power of that goodness when it breaks through to the surface.

It is why Jesus says again and again to people who He meets, that it is their faith that has saved them.

In Luke 18:42, Jesus tells the blind man, “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”

In Luke 7:50, Jesus says to the woman who bathed His feet with her tears, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

To the bleeding woman in Mark 5:34, Jesus says, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”

It is the power of God’s love working within us—it is the faith that moves mountains—it is an infinitely deep well of God’s living water that nourishes our spirit.

It is hope.

It is too easy these days to give in to cynicism, to believe what we are told again and again about the worst of people, to think “why bother” when nothing in the world seems good, when everyone seems in it for themselves, when selflessness, when charity and grace seem in short supply.

Cynicism is easy.

Hope is hard.

But it is critical to living our best lives.

As Vaclav Havel once said, “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

And if I may be so bold to add to that.  Hope is knowing that no matter what, God is right there in the middle of it with us and that He believes in the best of us.

Cynics tell us that they are realists.  But time and again, God shows us that true realists exist in a state of hope.

As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13:12-13, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

So why do I mow the leaves?  Even when I know that the swirling winds of autumn will drop a stormful of even more leaves just a few hours later?

I do it to practice hope.

I do it because I read that mulching the leaves nourishes and fertilizes the ground.

I do it not for the now, but for the spring.

I do it for the future.

None of us knows what our future holds which is why it is so desperately important that every decision we make is one that focuses on hope and love and not cynicism and disgust disguised as realism.

God is our reality.

And He is love.

And He is hope.

And He is all we need.

Amen.