As the days come when a promise of autumn is thick in the air and the wind in the trees opens new pathways to the sun; revealing new hints of gold and red… for me it always brings to mind a certain poem, written by Robert Frost, and a certain promise made by God.
Here is the poem.
“Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf’s a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden came to grief, so dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.”
For me, the poem brings an image of early spring, that precious golden time when nature first wakes. It is, for me, a glimpse of Eden. But as summer beckons, nature resumes a more industrious rhythm, forgoing her peak of beauty in order to meet the needs of others.
I think the same in fall. The earliest fall is gold. When the winds are cooling, the apples ripening, and the leaves changing. It is a golden time, like a spring of a different sort. A time of deep thought and glad heart, as we all prepare to reap nature’s bounty. She is, again, at her peak of beauty, her hardest hue to hold. Yet quickly as ever, comes the need to become less; the need to wind downward.
As the poem comes to a close, as nature resumes her path of blessing; leaving that dream-like standstill, Robert ends with a line that leaves us all wistful; nothing gold can stay. It stirs up that ever present longing in our hearts, for the time when all creation was gold. The time when God walked in our midst. We lived in a state of gold, our existence blissful and innocent.
That time was ended with the entrance of sin into the world, into our hearts. And yes, ever since then, nothing gold could stay. That has been the way of our existence, to be forever sinning, cast away from God.
But then something happened that changed everything. God loved us even in our sin. He knew that we could not save ourselves, so he made a way. His only son came to earth, with mercy in his hand. He was born in a stable, and you know the rest.
He lived a sinless life. He performed miracles, he healed the sick, and he walked with us, fully God and fully man, loving and forgiving us and teaching us. He promised us new life in him, for all that accept him as their savior. For the wages of sin is death, but all who come to Christ are given eternal life. Because when he died on the cross, he paid for our sin. Thousands of sinful years since Eden’s fall, and thousands more to come; he paid it all. We no longer belong to our sin. Now we can become children of God.
Three days later, he rose. A little while after that, he ascended into heaven. But he didn’t leave us forever. He left us with a promise. That he would come back, bringing heaven to us, casting away the dark forever and making our existence new. Sadness and pain will be but memory, and all will be gold again.
So when the first blooms of spring show their faces or the leaves are starting to change their hue, (or of course, whenever I read that poem) it fills me with wonder and longing. God did not come yesterday, or the day before that, so I think it is safe to say that whatever he is doing is not yet finished. And who can say when it will be? For he is perfect, and so is his timing.
Still, knowing that doesn’t mean the waiting is easy. Our souls mourn for what we have lost and the pain we are enduring. After all, creation is broken. It just won’t stay that way. Like the fresh emerging spring, it will happen with certainty, even when it feels like winter will last forever, spring with come.
God will come, bringing back the gold… to stay.
Isabelle Robbins 2024
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