Nothing Gold Can Stay

For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born and a time to die;
a time to plant and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill and a time to heal;
a time to break down and a time to build up;
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
a time to throw away stones and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek and a time to lose;
a time to keep and a time to throw away;
a time to tear and a time to sew;
a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
a time to love and a time to hate;
a time for war and a time for peace.

-Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This scripture always makes me think of the changing of the seasons, particularly fall, when the leaves briefly change from healthy green to stunning reds and oranges before browning, falling to the ground, and being trampled underfoot with a most satisfying crunch.

There is something strange about the beauty of autumn. We drive into the mountains specifically to look at leaves that are dying. We take pictures of them. We decorate our homes with their colors. We wait all year for those few weeks when the trees are ablaze with red and orange and gold.

And then they are gone.

Both the turning leaves and Ecclesiastes’ theology of impermanence make me think of Robert Frost:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Frost seems to grasp that nature's impermanence is part of what makes us notice its beauty in the first place. 

Ecclesiastes also understands that. The author does not tell us that the time of weeping exists so that we can eventually get to the better time of laughter. He doesn't promise that whatever comes next will be an improvement over what came before. He simply tells us that there is a season for both.

I think that is an important distinction because Christians can sometimes be a little too quick to explain away change and loss. When something ends, we want to immediately reassure one another that God must have something better waiting around the corner.

Sometimes that may be true...but sometimes something good simply ends.

A child grows up. A friend moves away. A season of life winds down. A ministry reaches the end of its life. We don't have to pretend those things aren't painful simply because we trust God.

The leaves don't have to stay on the tree forever for us to be grateful for them.

Perhaps part of faithfulness is learning to receive each season for what it is: to celebrate what deserves celebrating, to grieve what deserves grieving, and to resist the temptation to cling so tightly to yesterday that we miss the life God has given us today.

Nothing gold can stay.

And that is precisely why it is worth noticing while it is here.

Rev. Ryan Young