oh... look, that's my favorite

In Concord I believe we have just peaked our fall color beauty for this year.  All the trees are starting to look less bright and more dark but that's not the point of this blog.  I have had so many people ask me about the Beauty of Costa Rica.  The Rain forest, the flowers, the insects, the sea line, etc... and yes all aspects of Costa Rica are beautiful, but nothing is as gorgeous as fall in Carolina.
The perfect temperatures of 40, in the morning, 70 in the afternoon, no humidity, and Carolina blue skies wisped with thin white clouds would make the lonely and depressed notice.  But, I love the colors.  When driving down the road between the tree lines of orange, red, yellow, brow, green, reddish/yellow, makes me soak in the beauty of my Father.  This was no different last Thursday when I was traveling with my aunt.  Here we are leaving her house for lunch, after planting 200 tulips, when we both say, "look at the trees!"  It was crazy.  Well, I continue the convo by stating how I love the Red leaves.  How much I love seeing that one Red tree pop amongst the many Carolina Pines.  Well, travel down the road 2 more miles amongst the tree barrier of Yellow and Orange I state, "Oh these... look!!... These are my favorite."  As you can figure, there were no Reds in this bunch of trees, Red i do love, but hey Orange and Yellow I love too.  Let's go a few more miles down the road and here we are staring at a tree where you can see the leaves color progress from green to red due to the sunlight exposure.  It was amazing, and again I state... "look, that's my favorite."
After stating 3 different stages of leave changes as my favorite, my aunt karen pointed out the fact, I need to pick one, because you can only have ONE favorite... but Like a bunch! Well.... I decided to just change my statement to "oh... Look... I love leaves!"
I got to thinking more about my unable to pick a fav color of leaf delima and what the changing leaves showed... death.  There is beauty in Death.  There is beauty in every stage (color) of Death.  Often times death get's a bad rap of darkness.  And yes, when Paw Paw died, I was and continue to get sad.  Death of the patriarch, friend, and hero is hard... but there is beauty in him passing as well (that'll be another blog) but for now, well, take a look around.  Look around right now outside at the colorful tree line and tell me death is dark.  Dying is dark.  I don't know.  It kind of looks as though when something is put to Death there is beauty.  That awful secret you have put to death.  That thought from the enemy you have put to death.  The payment of your sins put to death.  The actual death you were to face before Jesus, put to death.  The one thing that you have battled with and finally won, put to death.  It's beautiful.  Put it to death!! and tell me which is your favorite...