Autumn Spiritual Season

 Autumn is a time of loss and death, a time of releasing. The hours of daylight decrease and the weather becomes cooler. Leaves on deciduous plants and trees lose their green, food-producing chlorophyll, revealing the true colors of the leaves that have been hidden beneath – the yellows, reds, and browns.  Nutrients that are in the leaves are taken away and stored in the plant’s bark. No longer able to produce food and stripped of their nutrients, the leaves eventually fall off the plants and trees. The landscape becomes increasingly stark.

Yet, despite all this death,  Autumn is a time of fruitfulness and beauty too. In early Autumn, fruits like apples and pumpkins abound.  The temperature can feel refreshing especially after a long, hot summer.  And who doesn’t love to behold the Autumn colors or perhaps jump into a large pile of fallen leaves?

The Autumn Season in our Spiritual Lives

Like the natural season of Autumn, the spiritual season of Autumn is a time of releasing, a time of dying.  The Autumn season is perhaps the most difficult season for us to go through.  In this season, situations arise which cause us to look deeply into ourselves and to recognize our weaknesses, frailties, sins, and dependence on God – a process that can be painful and challenging at times.  We can feel as if we have been stripped bare, and aspects of ourselves that we wished to keep hidden from ourselves and others are suddenly out in the open just as the true colors of the leaves are revealed in the Autumn months after the chlorophyll has disappeared.

In the Autumn season, we often come face-to-face with idols we have made in our lives and ways we have neglected and hurt God and others.  We come face-to-face with false notions of ourselves and God to which we have clung.  When we recognize these idols and false notions, we are given a choice.  We can cling onto them like the leaves in late Autumn do when they have shriveled up and died yet still hold fast to the tree.  Or we can release them to God, allowing these idols and ourselves to fall gently into the arms of our loving Savior.  The latter involves dying to self, putting aside false identities, and repenting or changing the course of our habits and life.  This also of course requires a posture of trust, believing that God desires the best for us and believing that releasing our idols will eventually (even if not right away) lead to a more fruitful and abundant life.

Sometimes during this season, God also asks us to release good things to Him – things in our lives that are not idolatrous or sinful yet need to be released if we are to receive the new gifts that God has for us.  For example, when we feel a call from God to move or change jobs, we are asked to leave friends, loved ones, familiar work, and beloved places behind.  Giving up these good things can be quite difficult and can also open us up to a new dependence on God and a new understanding of ourselves.

When it comes to the spiritual season of Autumn, there are many situations that can precipitate this season in our lives, including tragic circumstances that have interjected themselves into our lives, life transitions (marriage, births, deaths, moves, new jobs, etc.), questions of faith, and sinful behaviors and attitudes that have bled out into our life and relationships.  Whatever the circumstances may be, the Autumn season is often accompanied with loss and grief, and thus we must be attentive to this grief, caring for ourselves well, and seeking out companions who can walk with us through this time. If we have lost relationships in this season due to sinful behaviors, we have to grapple with that loss during this season, picking up the pieces of our lives and praying for potential opportunities in the future for reconciliation.

There is of course also good news in all this releasing, dying, and loss we experience in the Autumn season.  It really is a season of beauty to be received as a gift from God (if not during the season, then sometimes afterwards).  As Jesus himself said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”  (John 12:24 ESV).

The Autumn seasons in our life makes room for Winter, Spring, and Summer seasons.  They open up the possibility for emotional and spiritual healing.  They open up space for new and abundant life, the kind of life that we can only embrace if we die to ourselves first.  Moreover, they open ourselves to embracing our true selves.  Just like the true colors of the leaves are revealed when the chlorophyll goes away, our true selves can be revealed when we finally release those idols and false identities that obscure who we truly are.