I love the fall! It is my absolute favorite time of year. The climate, the food, the pollen-free fresh air, and my birthday are just a few reasons why this time of year is the best. One of the reasons why most people love the fall is the colorful landscape outside, especially in the Maryland area. When was the last time you looked outside? Have you noticed how beautiful everything is?
About a week ago I was sitting in my living room alone looking outside at the trees and God spoke to me so clearly. (Side note, God usually speaks to me when I’m by myself in the silence – gotta love introverts, lol!) He asked me, “What do you need to let go?”
As I gazed through the window, I watched the fall leaves float to the ground. I realized the trees were letting go of the foliage that had bathed them in beauty all summer. God reminded me of the seasons and how everything in this world works in cycles. Just like we have winter, spring, summer, and fall, our lives are also cyclical. Winter is the time when the earth gets to rest. Spring is the time of production; summer is when you get to reap the benefits of what sprung up in spring. Lastly, fall is the time of death or letting go. I know that sounds really morbid, but death is necessary and can be a very beautiful thing. Just take a look outside! The reason why you have the beauty of fall is because things are dying.
Our lives have seasons too – seasons of production, reaping benefits, and even death. Many of us are always in a season of production. We always have to be on our grind – going from one thing to the next, never really resting. Oh yeah, you may sleep, but that doesn’t mean that you’re resting. As I was looking outside my window that night, God revealed to me that in order to receive true rest, you must learn how to let go of dead things. Many of us find ourselves sleeping and never really getting rest because we’re still grasping things that God never intended us to hold onto. Are there things you need to let go?
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
Ecclesiastes 3:1 NIV
Some of us are in a rut. We work to produce more and more but never really get ahead. May I suggest to you that one of the reasons why you may be struggling could be because you have not let some things go? Just think about it: if the trees still held on to dead leaves in the fall, clutching them throughout winter, their branches would never be free to grow new leaves in the spring. Letting go of the old gives way to the new.
Just like the trees that let go of dying leaves, we can let go of the dead things in our lives and allow them to feed what God has for us in the future. When that colorful foliage falls to the ground, it becomes fertilizer that will nourish the trees to grow more leaves in due season.
“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” Isaiah 43:18-19 NIV
So I’ll ask you again in this season of fall, “What do you need to let go?”
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