hidden color

There is a brightness coming into the woods surrounding the pond now.  Hardwood leaves are beginning to dress in stylish golds and reds.  I was curious about the process by which leaves change colors.  It turns out that, as days shorten and nights grow longer, something triggers a reduction in the production of chlorophyll within the leaves.  Cells begin to grow around the veins that carry the sugars from the leaf to the tree and this traps the sugars within the leaf.  Extra sugar, combined with sunny and cool fall days causes other pigments within the leaf to display the yellow, brown and red colors we enjoy.  Eventually the circulation from the leaf to the stem is entirely cutoff and the leaf dies and falls to the ground.  The green color that dominates from spring through summer is due to photosynthesis and, while production is busy and the sugars are carried to the rest of the tree, the other non-green pigments are overwhelmed by the green chlorophyll.  Those colors just have to wait until the brief period when production slows in preparation for winter before they show.  It occurred to me that we, also, have other colors to show in the later stages of life.  During our busy, productive years we wear the color of vitality and energy.  As our days here grow shorter and we don't need as much sugar in our veins we begin to show other colors...shades of wisdom, mellow warmth, and brilliant gratitude.  Unfortunately, like the leaves of some trees, some of us just seem to go from green to a murky brown, become brittle and blow away.  But the pigments for more brilliant hues lie waiting within the leaves of our lives to reveal great inner beauty, which only the latter stages of life can reveal (all we need is the sugar of the Savior and the light of the Lord!)

Revelation 22: ¹ Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ² down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.