The vibrant colors of autumn have faded.  The landscape of empty limbs is broken up by an occasional evergreen proudly displaying its needles or by a limb full of stubborn brown leaves trying to beat the odds of winter.  There are still leaves on the ground; but mostly, just leaf crumbs. Reds and golds have muted into shades of brown.  It’s as if fall has been told to sit down and hush. 

This is New Hampshire at Thanksgiving.  It’s pretty in its own way, but not the type of thing people come from far away to witness.

But I traveled to New Hampshire this week.  It just seemed like the thing to do on my mom’s first birthday in heaven.  I wanted to be able to cheer on my dad who has been very brave over the last six months.  He and I stood at her grave today and shed a few tears together.  I wanted to talk; but tears have a way of stealing words.

The last 18 months or so have been quite a season for grief.  It seems most everyone I know has been touched by it and many of those closest to me lost someone dear to them recently.

That’s why, when my sister pointed out the faded-but-still-beautiful landscape today, it resonated with me.  It tells a story that I want to tell; and it doesn’t require words.  The vibrancy that New England is famous for is gone for a time; but all is not lost.  There is still a simple, quiet beauty left. If we choose to see it.

One of the great conundrums of grief is that we want to heal and yet we do not want to forget.  Some people leave books they’ve written, songs they’ve sung, or history they’ve changed.  Those people can be assured that their names will continue to be repeated long after their hearts have stopped beating.  My mom was an extraordinarily hard worker, but she didn’t leave a book beyond the dozens of binders of science lesson plans.  She left no music—except dozens of grands puffing on trumpets and sawing on violins. 

Just a few weeks ago, my mom had another grandchild born bringing the count to even twenty-eight.  Our family is perhaps her greatest tribute.  But even then, we are just a bunch of fallen human beings.  We may have impressive quantity, but we have our share of problems and then some.  And even if we could do her justice; we will not live forever. 

Will she be forgotten?

As I pondered my mom’s life and the fading glory of fall, I was reminded of John 15:16, “You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit, and that your fruit would remain...”

I cannot unpack all that is in those words spoken by Christ on the night of his betrayal.  It is interesting though that Jesus did not convince the majority of the Jews that He was the Messiah.  After his death, most of them saw Him only as a rabbi who had lived with them for a short while.  He never set up his kingdom—which was the single most important thing the Jews were looking for in a Messiah.  They wanted a military leader to free them from the Romans.  After His death, they wrote Him off.  He did not do the one thing that his nation hoped He had come to do.

He lived a short life, left no offspring, wrote no book, sang no songs, and built no lasting structures.  By all measures, He should have been forgotten.

However, the night before He died, when He spoke of bearing fruit that would “remain,” He knew He was commissioning His disciples with a life work that would change the entire world forever, not just the four corners of Israel. 

The disciples were a band of misfits, but they did choose to live and die for Christ.  They did bear fruit.  And that fruit has “remained.”  In fact, it turned the world upside down.

I think of some of the last conversations I had with my mom.  I think of how happy she was to meet Jesus.  How blessed she felt and how ready she was to let go of this world. 

I think she would tell me it’s okay to let this season drop its leaves and hush as the next season gets ready to take it’s turn.  

She will never be forgotten by those of us who knew her.  But more importantly, her fruit will always remain.  Because it never was about her.  She invested her life in what she knew would last for eternity; The fruit of her life was always about Jesus.

Sometimes I don’t have the words to say the truth to a hurting world. Sometimes, I don’t have the courage. But if I could stand up and tell the world one thing, it would be to invest their life on earth in the cause of Christ. That is the only way to insulate yourself from fear and enjoy the beauty of the changing seasons of this world.

And, tonight, we are expecting a beautiful snow.