Leaves

Last Sunday Fraser and I went to the evening prayer meeting at our church in Wellington. It was made up of the two of us and three others sitting on benches in the evening sun outside the church building. We chatted and prayed and joked about how nearly anything could be turned into a sermon or kids' talk illustration. Watch out for several of these in the next few posts.

At the moment the oak tree at the side of our flat is starting to decide that autumn's coming (it's a bit topsy-turvy season-wise for me in South Africa). Leaves are turning brown and falling. They have a propensity to gather just outside the back door. I can sweep a pile away in the morning but by evening you'd think I'd done nothing and they're again waiting for someone to tramp them inside.

Then it occurred to me that's what happens to us. We can sweep away a bad habit, a persistent temptation or attitude but unless we change our environment, circumstances or way of living, the thing we're trying to overcome or get rid of will always keep finding a way back into our lives.

Those leaves will keep coming back as I can't change the prevailing winds. If I were to cut down the tree that would solve the problem but would seem rather radical. Sometimes the radical is what we need, painful though it is. I pray that we'll be able to discern what it is that needs to be changed in our lives to bring us closer to God and have to courage to do it.