I hope your week has gone well. Mine has been very full – Session meeting, taking a day to watch after my oldest child while schools were closed for voting day, trying to fit in all the rest of the stuff for this coming Sunday (and beyond), band practice, and planning for this weekend at BPC. . .
The week has been very full – but very good.
And then. . . I look out at our lawn and all I can see is leaves. Leaves! Leaves! Leaves! For some reason, all of the big oak trees in our yard decided that this week was the week for “Leaf-Maggedon!!!!” About 75% of the leaves on our oak trees fell over a single 48 hour period. It is a LOT!
Our most excellent Clerk of Session, Fran Bader, is a Master Gardener and strongly believes that when leaves fall on your lawn, you should just leave them there. Maybe they’ll blow down the street or into the woods. Either way, they’ll pile up where they need to and bless your lawn with all of the right microorganisms to keep your lawn healthy when Spring rolls around.
This is a wonderful idea and I’m all for it! But where we live, in the City of Manchester, right next to our wonderful retiree neighbors who have a little more free time on their hands to get rid of their leaves, it’s kind of a “lawn and leaf peer pressure-cooker” over here.
This year, I have put most of the maple leaves into a place in our yard where they can decompose over the course of the winter. I have plans to mulch them up. But the oak leaves are another thing, entirely. . . They don’t break down too easily. So, I’m splitting the difference: keeping the maple leaves (with a nod to the most-excellent Fran Bader) and bagging (yes, we bag our leaves in Manchester) the oak leaves.
It’s going to be a big job and I’m not sure when it will all come together but we have three weeks to get the oak leaves up before the city stops collecting them for the season.
Why am I telling you this? Not to complain! Life is so full of so many good things! And. . . The to-do list is long and life is full and sometimes it can get even more full when your yard is full of leaves, and there’s stuff to do on the calendar, and stuff to do for work and at home and it can all be so much.
And yet, even when life is full (maybe especially when life is full!) it is good to slow down, and then to stop, and breathe, and give thanks for every blessing – the blessings of life, and work, and home, and family, and friends. . . and oak trees that are so tall and beautiful and are part of God’s wondrous creation.
Life is full. . . But God is also full of life and full of blessing. . .
Thanks be to God!
See you in church!
Grace and Peace,
John
Prepare for Worship
This Week: “The Loving Gift of Knowledge” (Gifts That Cost Us Nothing. . . And Everything)
Read Matthew 25:1-13
Read Matthew 9:14-17
Read or sing Hymn # 349 – “Sleepers Wake! A Voice Astounds Us” . The organist on this particular version of the hymn is Robert McCormick, a childhood friend of mine. We used to sing in Children’s Choir together in Macon, GA. He isn’t too shabby, is he? 🙂