A Leaf That Will Not Fall

It is fall. All around us we can see this. The days become shorter, the nights colder. The trees which a short time ago were laden with fruits are now letting their leaves fall.

That falling leaf fills us with nostalgia. This shows us that there is nothing in this world which is permanent. In the spring, the trees stood with the promise of new life. The tender green shoots spoke of a great change that was coming. The beautiful blossoms promised a full harvest.

And now the falling of those leaves sends us a message of death and dying. God’s Word uses this as an image of the life of a man. We all fall from the tree of life as a leaf from the tree. Not one of us will remain.

Do you ever think of that, dear friends? Let us just stop and think about such a tree. Each falling leaf has its own message. Each leaf tells us that we also will fall from the tree of the life of man. We are going to die.

Isaiah says: “And we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind have taken us away.” Notice how they do not all fall at the same time. There were young tender leaves which were perhaps torn off early in the spring. How sad when a young life is taken away in the springtime of life!

There were those which fell during the summer storm. The Lord says, “What is your life?” It is only as a vapor. How foolish we are when we put the day of death far from us!

There are still a few leaves remaining in the top of the tree. Will they continue to remain? No, during a cold, stormy day they will also fall. The Lord says, “There is no one who will remain.” We all will fade as a leaf. The leaves which are falling off the trees in our backyards testify of the perishableness of our lives. And yet the Lord speaks of a tree “that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither” (Ps. 1:3).

God’s people are as a tree whose leaves will not fall. Here the Lord speaks of that new life which will never come to an end. We call this the new birth, a one-sided work of God wrought in the heart of man. Between the cradle and the grave this must be worked in us.

By nature we miss this new life. All the knowledge we may acquire together with all our efforts, cannot work this life in us. All our merits have no earning power. This is difficult to accept; it fights against our proud nature.

How is it possible for a people who are lying in the midst of death to be like a tree that will bring forth fruit, whose leaf will not wither? Only by the eternal God moving from within Himself. Then it cannot be that from the side of man there is a climbing upward to heaven, but that the Lord )esus comes down from heaven to draw enemies out of the mire of sin and iniquity and bestows upon them the gift of life.

That new life is like all other life; it is subject to growth. Here the new man runs into so many obstacles, for he measures that growth so differently than He who planted that life. Often he must say, can I be a child of God and be thus — when, more than he ever thought possible, he experiences a daily sorrow and is continually troubled because he is so overcome with the lusts of the flesh, with world-liness, and with his own corrupt heart.

What mark is there in my life that it is well with my soul, when I am so easily and continually overcome by sin? Add to this the days and the weeks when it is so cold and so hard within; when prayers are no more than words; when the sighings of the heart are not there. It is at such a time that the Lord leads him in such a way that he can see no growth and there is no going upward.

One day I will fall and wither as a leaf. My iniquities must certainly take me away as by the wind. By grace is that your place, dear friend? Remember then this solemn truth, one that we do not easily learn — we must be overcome in order to overcome. This tree can only live and its leaf can only remain green and flourishing when it may be nourished by the rivers of water as they are in Christ Jesus. He is the firm foundation for His people. Only in Him is there life. Therefore, all other resting grounds must be taken away.

Is it not so that we endeavor to add to our strength from our own stockpile, weakly trying to increase it, so that in this way we may gain the victory through our own strength? No, there is victory only in Him who cried in Geth-semane and who died upon Golgotha. And seeing His victory the Apostle Paul by faith says: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us” (Rom. 8:37).

Thus, for God’s people to gain the victory, they must know their weaknesses and their weaknesses can only be known when their consciences may be opened. At such a time we may experience defeat of all that is of self. Then we may bow in the dust with empty hands. Then we may learn that outside of Christ there is no life —that life is only in and through Him.

Every defeat in our life is a necessary experience so that it may become evident that by the grace of God we are as a tree whose leaf shall not wither.

Do you miss that life? Then the falling of the leaves this autumn still has a message for you. Make haste for your life! For soon your leaf will fall. May you by grace know something of that new life. True, the days of darkness are many; thus, with you it is more a missing than a possessing.

But the Lord says in His Word, and that Word is truth, “He shall be like a tree…whose leaf will not wither”— never to die, but to live for all eternity!

Rev. J. Den Hoed is pastor of the Netherlands Reformed Congregation of Rock Valley, Iowa.

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