Mom said how blessed they were in southern California with
great weather. I agreed, and then countered that we are blessed here with
glorious autumnal showstopping colours.
After our conversation, I decided to collect a few fallen
leaves of varying shades and pop them in a card to brighten her day. I left
them in a kitchen window and watched them dry out and curl and then it dawned
on me: if I put those into an envelope, by the time they go through the
franking machines and various hands between Scotland and California, they will be
nothing but a shower of confetti pieces which will have lost all shape and
beauty.
I turned to google and learned how to press them first, in a
heavy book. Fittingly, I put them in the leaves of an ancient family Bible Don
has, huge and heavy. When they are dry, I’ll send them, and hope they arrive
looking as lovely as they do now.
As I walk through my life, events colour me. Time ages me
and I can become brittle, and the beauty of wisdom and experience can harden
into the ugliness of arrogant prejudice and presumption. I need to be pressed
every day, pressed every day in God’s good book, so that I retain a humility
and openness, a thirst for learning and a delight in this good world God has
created. So that I can give joy to others, and not irritation.
The world can be a hard place, and if we let it, the years
can warp and twist us until we fall apart in brittle little bits. Only as I
bring myself to God regularly and let his love embrace me, will I be able to
remain supple and reflect his glorious colours of love, joy, peace and hope.
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