November is the ugliest month. The brilliant fall colors are gone and the days are growing shorter. The sky is gray; the fields are gray. Even my mood turn gray, so I bundle up and, as Grandma would say, “go out and get the stink blowed off.”
Walking the lane in October, I am encouraged by the parallels between our lives and the changing seasons. God gives us spiritual springtimes, full of hope and promise and newness. He gives us summers when we are ripe with fruit, and seasons of victory when our lives reflect God’s presence with all the glory of sugar maples in autumn.
But what about November? The trees drop their leaves and bear no fruit. What beauty can we find in barrenness?
When we brave the gloom to venture outdoors, we discover the essence of a tree. We crane our necks to look up into the mighty trunk and branches of a majestic white oak, so strong and steadfast. Then we let our gaze drop to linger on the limbs of a dogwood growing beneath it, twining gracefully and quietly in dappled half-shadows. We see the smooth, silvery bark on a beech growing beside a shaggy hickory and even gray becomes beautiful. But these bare branches would die and fall to the ground to rot, except for one reason:
They abide.
When the air about them is cold and dry, they abide. When the wind is bitter and rough, they abide. The trees stretch their roots down beneath the dust and dead grass to the source of life, and even if a storm should tear off a branch, the wood beneath is still green. Though there be no fruit, no leaves, still there is life. There is the beauty of promise.
Novembers reveal the essence of the believer. All else is stripped away until we see the trunk and branches of trust. Roots reach beneath the despair and fear to seek the Life that sustains, and the believer abides. “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial.” (James 1:12)
The psalmist and the chronicler call us to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. To be holy is to be set apart for a special purpose. When we set ourselves apart to God, when we entrust ourselves fully to Him in our barren times, our bare trusting branches become a thing of beauty, and we need not fear November.
