The best is yet to come

I was setting on my deck this past Sunday admiring the beautiful fall foliage as nature prepares our landscape for the coming winter.

The thought entered my mind that the first man and first woman to witness these amazing seasonal changes must have been completely terrified, thinking the world was surely coming to an end.

As fall advanced into winter and bitter cold covered the land, ice storms, heavy snow, and less and less sunlight became the norm. Our early ancestors probably hid in their shelters frightened, puzzled, and crying out to be saved from the forthcoming death and destruction.

However, as bitter winter abruptly advanced into spring and life started returning to the earth, the people probably rejoiced and danced about in merriment and gaiety, happy that The Great Spirit had decided to spare them. Over the years they began to realize that it was not the wrath of an angry deity that made the seasonal changes but the normal way of nature.

Our lives are similar in nature to the changing of the seasons. We are born into life like beautiful flowers and spring buds, innocent, amazed and curious. As our spring develops into summer, we grow and learn and mature and seek to produce life of our own.

As the fall of our lives comes around, we look about us with wonder at the beauty and hardships that our path through life has taken us. And, in the winter of our life, we reflect back on what was, what is, and what might have been.

Many do not believe in life after death. They are like our early ancestors certain in their knowledge that winter is the end of all life as they know it. However, some of us know and believe there is life beyond the grave.

Surely as God brings beauty into the spring of our life, God also adorns us with magnificent fall foliage during the fall of our life, preparing us for that transition from winter into a new and eternal spring… an incredible new beginning.

After advancing through all the seasons of our life, knowing and believing that – God has prepared a place for us is a warm and comforting feeling. Like our early ancestors witnessing spring for the first time, we will witness eternal spring when we shed our physical trappings and wrap ourselves in the everlasting joy of eternal life.

I rejoiced in the first birthday of my newest grandson, this past week, and was grateful that God allowed me to be present to see His blessings on my family. Wonder and beauty and mere words cannot easily describe the feeling I had as he was brought forth for all of us to bear witness.

At the same time, from those same deep thoughts of wonder, I gazed in the mirror at his grandfather, aware that I am in the winter of my life. I may not know it but God is preparing me for transition into a new and eternal spring.

For if God creates such incredible beauty in the spring of our lives, allowing it to grow, improve and endure as He nurtures it throughout the seasons, it makes no sense to put a sudden and eternal end to the beauty and greatness that has evolved, that He has created.

An intelligent person cannot believe that death is the end of all life as did those who feared the first winter.

A smart person believes that death will bring a new spring of life and immortality thus enhancing and fulfilling the miracle that God has created and nurtured.

I do not know what life after death may bring - but I do know that…the best is yet to come!