Leaves

A while back, when I started gardening again, I began saving rainwater for my garden.  I placed buckets in the driveway and poured the water into large jugs to water from.  One day, while emptying a bucket, I noticed a lot of wet gunk at the bottom.  Most people would have just dumped it out and moved on.  I usually did. But I noticed something.

I had recently seen a video on how to make skeleton leaves.  I had received one at an event years ago, and it was beautiful.  I’ve seen them in stores, but never thought about making them.  After watching the video, I tried, but the leaves kept tearing, so I quit.  Then came the day I was emptying the bucket.

At the bottom of that bucket, on any other day I would have just dumped and walked away, I saw a skeleton.  I walked over to a small table and began cleaning the gunk with fresh water.

It took over an hour to sift through the mud and dirt.  I found leaves almost fully cleansed of flesh and some others just starting to shed.  I laid them out to dry.  I collected over 50 leaf skeletons.

I had to be careful not to miss any.  Several times I missed a leaf hiding behind dirt in the water. I began thinking.  These leaves are like us.

As humans, we walk around in our skin of the world. We’re dirty, blemished, scared.  We’re the gunk that the world throws away.  But God sees something worth saving in the bottom of the bucket, and He’s not afraid to dig through the gunk.  “For God so loved the world, He sent His only son. That whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16.  We’ve all heard this. God loves us, so He would not throw us away.  

​ Neither would Jesus. “He got up from the table, took off His outer robe, and tied a towel around Himself. He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and wipe them with the towel tied around Him.” John 13:4-5.  Feet are dirty, especially feet that have walked in dirt, wearing only sandals.  Washing feet was a job for the lowest of the low. Yet Jesus chose to do this for His disciples, to teach them that they were called to be servants.

​ As I washed the leaves, I kept seeing how they represent our lives. We are humans living in the world, covered by the world.  But God loved us and sent Jesus. Jesus loved us and cleansed us from the world, from our sins.

​ As I looked at the leaves I had harvested, I thought about how they looked like a church.   Some members are long-time members, Christians for years, with very little of the world left in their lives. Some have just started coming to church and are still wearing their worldly skin. Some are broken and scarred by the world. We all look different, depending on our walk with God.  In John 15:3, Jesus tells Peter, “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.”  We are cleansed of the world as we listen to God’s word and study His word. 1 John 1:7 tells us, “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we will have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all our sins.”  “¹⁶Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; ¹⁷Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.¹⁸Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”  Isaiah 1:16-18.

We shall become as those leaves, cleansed from the world, cleansed from our sins.