Weekly e-News for September 18
Hey, everyone!
Wow!
Are you feelin’ the chill in the air?
Fall!!
It’s on the way!
With all the crispness!
The spectacular colors!!
Annual autumn smells!
Well, actually, fall doesn’t smell like it use to.
It used to smell like cigar smoke at Neyland during games (they can’t do that any more)…
and burning leaves on Saturday (we can’t do that any more)…
and dog doo that was somehow always in the giant piles of leaves we’d jump in (I don’t do that any more!)
But the colors will be the same as always!
Actually, the colors are technically in those leaves all the time. I was reading that stuff in leaves called carotenes and xanthophyll give them their reds and yellows, and those are in there the whole time. But when the trees are making loads of chlorophyll, it’s greeniness covers, over powers, and swamps all other colors so that green is all you see. But when the chlorophyll “poops out” in the fall (that’s the technical word botanists use) the reds and yellows shine thru!
As Freddy Smith says on WDVX, “Whodda thunk it?”
Tons of folks will be heading up to the Smokies in just a few weeks to see the spectacular carotenes and xanthophyll show. (Doesn’t sound so cool when you put it like that!)…
but lots of them may not go where the fall spectacle is the most spectacular…
A few weeks go, we went on a hike to Laurel Falls. It’s the most hikable and hiked of all hikes up there! It’s even paved all the way to the falls! We saw folks hiking in flip flops…with kids riding on shoulders, on backs, on heads…there was one family where the dad was pulling one of those suitcases with the pop-up handle (?!)
They all stop at the falls.
We didn’t.
If you keep going for a half a mile or so, you wind up in an “old-growth forest”. Most of the trees in the Smokies have only been growing since the 1920’s. Loggers had cut down almost all of the trees before that…
(It’s why they made it a national park! So stuff could grow in peace!)
But there are some hidden places the logging companies couldn’t reach. And the trees there…hemlocks, poplars, red maples, white oaks, silverbells…have never been cut down.
And these trees are soooo ooooold!
And waaaaay taaaaaall!
And huuuuuuuuuge!!
And breath-taking!
And awe-inspiring, majestic, and beautiful!
Truly!
Once you’ve seen them, you feel like you’ve never seen a tree before!
But most people never have seen the big trees! Most don’t know they’re there!
And, you know what? This is weird to say (like that’s never happened before in these emails!) but the trees don’t care!
I know it’s because they’re trees and not people, but it was awesome just being around some of God’s creations that were awe-inspiring, majestic, and beautiful, growing before God alone, seen by no one…
And not caring in the least!
He knows and sees and that’s enough reason for a tree!
And you know what else?
Maybe you’re spending loads of time helping someone who is dealing with something very difficult…
And they wouldn’t make it without you…
Or you’re giving your whole heart to breaking the chains of a destructive pattern in your own life…
Or you have a place you go to help super-needy people make some sense of Jesus and what He could do for them if they would have Him…
And no one sees…
Or know that you’re there…
But He sees!
He knows!
To Him, you're awe-inspiring, majestic, and beautiful!
He knows and sees and that’s enough reason for a tree!
And for thee.