Golden leaves attached to the one TRUE vine

*Originally written on October 11th, 2010*

In an earlier post I discussed a poem by Robert Frost, Nothing Gold Can Stay:

Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leafs a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

I pondered the meaning God had for me in this and a revelation finally came, at least my interpretation for it.  I didn't get to run this past Saturday, so when I had to take off work early a tink and didn't have to meet up with Maxwell (my workout buddy), with the weather being so beautiful, I decided to go out for a run on the trail.  Many things crossed my mind, many thoughts I had to run from, and then I started thinking on a subject that has been on my mind since the autumn season came upon us...the beauty of death.  Think about it, its really what this season is truly about, the glory of death.  All the magnificent changes in colors-the gold, crimson, and browns of the trees, as their leaves slowly die and fall. And during this season of death, seeds of new life fall to the ground.  Then its followed by a dormant season or mourning, through winter, where everything, all the many colors are all  covered in a blanket of white snow.  This season of rest prepares the seeds that fell, the new life, for their glorious debut in Spring!  Without the fall or winter seasons, there would be no life in the spring or summer!

Now your probably wondering how this matches up with the poem I started with.

Well Nature's first green is gold. Think of the beginning of fall, what is the first color the leaves turn?  Gold. It's the hardest hue to hold because it soon turns to red and then brown before its death is final and falls to the ground. Her early leaf's a flower, but only so an hour has to do with the flowers that come in the spring from the fall season...but this season is soon turned into summer and then returns to fall, the season of death yet again.

But to me, there is a much deeper meaning behind this poem.
the life of Jesus Christ our Lord

Christ symbolizes nature's first true perfect  gold when He was born through the virgin Mary into this world. This hue was hard to hold through His short life &  ministry of only 3 years, from the age of 30-33. Then His leaf color changed into the awesome deep reds through the stripes on His back that He took for us & the shedding of His innocent blood, He turns to the last color of the fall season as He hangs on the cross, & finally the finale of autumn as He symbolically falls from the tree, the cross, and His physical body is placed in a tomb.  He enters winter...

...through His winter He covers ALL THE WORLD with THE brilliancy of white, covering over our  sins as he conquers death and hell and is resurrected as the first flower of the spring, the early leaf became a flower.  He returns to the world as the one true vine, & we can now all become grafted in.  For Christ is the vine, the Heavenly Father is the gardener, who prunes us, the branches and new leaves of spring and summer.  This season of spring, Eden in the poem, is only temporary for sin enters our lives and hearts, and the dawn of our lives is turned into day where we each reflect His glorious light, continually being pruned by the Father, as we await the time when we to shall enter our own autumn and begin the journey into the new birth of spring through the death of Christ. As we are perfect in Him, we cannot stay in this world, for we will become gold also...and nothing gold can stay.