A Glorious Death

Autumn Leaves

I'm looking up into the autumn leaves, and I realize I'm watching a glorious death.  These colors--this vibrant display of glory--come at the point of death (technically the disintegration of chlorophyll).   This beautiful moment represents the end of life for these leaves.  I don't name it as tragic.  I revel in this autumn landscape.  I take a picture and marvel.

What forms of death are glorious?  When, like these leaves, is death a moment of glory?

A Glorious Death

I think of when the will bends to God in a moment of surrender.  I think of what it means to become absorbed in divine purposes--letting my right to my own life, my own plans, and my own demands disintegrate like chlorophyll.  Like autumn leaves, I am most beautiful when I'm at the end of myself.  The Christian life might be seen as a glorious dying--a surrender of self--to become a child of the one whose Glorious Death wasn't tragic but victorious and radiant.

Decaying Tree

Later, I hike through a forest and come upon a massive decaying tree.  I think of this as a glorious death as I imagine the refuge and nourishment such a dying tree provides for the ecosystem.  Might I see my own life as a fallen tree, bowed down, dead to self, so that I might find the life that's truly life?

A life surrendered might feel tragic and painful.  But not for long.  It's nourishing, radiant, glorious.  We see and marvel.